RedHat 9 and 2.5.x support

I've just installed RedHat 9 on my desktop machine and I'd like if it will support running under 2.5.65+ instead of his usual 2.4.19+.

I've got a separate machine for mail, compiling and whatever else I need for real work. I just need to assure I can run my 2.5 kernel on this distro and use it for desktop. Do I need some special packages, manual installs, etc...???

I can recall there are modutils issues, and would not mind compiling/installing my own, but are there any other issues?

Greets, Antonio.

ps. cowahead! ;)

Other than modutils(*) there are no issues with RH9 and 2.5. I am running RH9 with 2.5 on my daily workstation.

Even NPTL, sysenter, and all the other goodies work flawlessly. It is quite nice.

(*) modutils may even work if RH ships the compatibility layer and the new module tools. I have no idea, I do not use modules.

Robert Love

Bestaetigt!

RH9 + 2.5.67-mm is quite nice here - apache,
squid, postfix, iptables, openvpn, bind - and a
very snappy X11 desktop -

The only extra requirement is rusty's module
init-tools.

Joe

I have a related question. While I am confident I can get RH9 to work with a 2.5 kernel, I would like to do this in such a way that booting into a 2.4 kernel still works, and installing updated 2.4 kernel RPMs from Red Hat also continues to work. I would also like to avoid making any changes that prevent me from upgrading to the next RH release. I assume I can accomplish this by only making changes that involve installing rpms rather than installing programs directly. I am not confident I can accomplish all this, having failed in my attempt with RH8 :-)

Can anyone comment on the feasibility of this?

Thanks,

Jim

If you don't use modules at all, and simply compile everything in, you can ignore the modutils issue completely. Other than that, you should have no problems.

John.

Isn't modules-init backward compatible, or did I read wrong somewhere?

-- John E. Jasen ([email protected])
-- User Error #2361: Please insert coffee and try again.

Yes, but I was assuming that you'd want to leave the RedHat module utilities RPM as it was, to make future upgrades easier.

I.E. you can use 2.5.X without hitting the modutils issue at all, is what I meant.

John.

It can be installed such that it calls the old versions, renamed to xxx-old, if used from a 2.4 system. However, I don't think Redhat did that type install for 9.0, so it will probably not work after an upgrade.

The last I looked modprobe.conf was a seriously deficient subset of modules.conf, but I haven't d/l the latest version, so some of the omissions may have been addressed. The major feature missing is (or was) the lack of probe capability (and probeall). You can run a dual system, but you do have to work at it a little bit.

bill davidsen <[email protected]>
  CTO, TMR Associates, Inc
Doing interesting things with little computers since 1979.

I think you can achieve the same outcome with a carefully crafted "install" command in modprobe.conf (granted it will be much more verbose than the equivalent "probe").

Try "man modprobe.conf" after installing Rusty's new modutils...

--
Paul

Actually, it's even easier than that...Rusty's included a script:

/sbin/generate-modprobe.conf

in the new modutils package that will convert modules.conf to modprobe.conf automagically...

--
Paul

* ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/rusty/modutils-2.4.21-18.src.rpm
* rpmbuild --rebuild modutils-2.4.21-18.src.rpm
* rpm -Uvh modutils-2.4.21-18.i386.rpm
* add the new kernel to /boot/grub/grub.conf

# vi /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit 
:360,360s/ksyms/modules/g
:wq

You are done.
Pau

I'm running 2.5.67 on an otherwise mostly-RH9, and it works fine modulo the usual issues with bleeding-edge kernels. I've only hit two issues that are at all redhat specific:

1) Get Rusty's module tools (but you knew that). If you install them right, they'll DTRT if you boot a 2.4 kernel too (keep the RH kernel around just in case. ;)

2) You'll need this work-around for modules, probably:

*** etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit.orig 2003-04-16 12:52:22.780531536 -0400
--- etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit 2003-04-09 21:40:36.000000000 -0400
***************
*** 360,365 ****
--- 360,366 ----
if ! LC_ALL=C grep -iq nomodules /proc/cmdline 2>/dev/null && [ -f /proc/ksyms ]; then
USEMODULES=y
fi
+ USEMODULES=y

# Our modutils don't support it anymore, so we might as well remove

  # the preferred link.

(or some other similar work-around for /proc/ksyms not being in 2.5 kernels)

I'm running on RHL 9 with 2.5.67-mm3 (plus Russell King PCMCIA/CardBus patches) and updated modutils + procutils + nfs-utils. It works flawlessly, although I needed some tweaking for "/etc/init.d/rc.sysinit" which insists in setting the module and hotplug helper binaries to "/sbin/true" due to missing "/proc/ksyms".

Please AVOID sending me WORD, EXCEL or POWERPOINT attachments.
See http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html
Linux Registered User #287198

I managed to avoid some of these things:

1. I compiled everything in-kernel and disabled modules, thus no modules related problems (*)

2. RH9 procutils _seems_ to work fine: I can do "vmstat 1" whereas the older gentoo image from summer I used to test boot 2.5 didn't.

(*) RH9 detected my elitegroup motherboard integrated sound and unsed the i810
module, but now with everything in it seems I can't have sound any ideas? Hmm, yes I _did_ compile i810 support in-kernel ;)

I'm also having another problem: gnome-terminal is freaking out when i run "make menuconfig" on it, very strange....

It does work fine.

The Red Hat 9 procps is very recent, even with some nice NPTL enhancements. If you want to try a newer release, you can get a CVS snapshot from http://tech9.net/rml/procps. But the RH9 version should be fine in 2.5.

Robert Love

http://www.codemonkey.org.uk/post-halloween-2.5.txt is a pretty good guide for starting to use 2.5 .

Diego Calleja