[CentOS] Yum not updating kernel

[Bob Taylor]

On Wed, 2008-02-27 at 06:29 -0600, Johnny Hughes wrote:
> Bob Taylor wrote:

[snip]

> > OK! Thanks Johnny. You just confirmed a bug here. Now I will, as time
> > allows, see if I can discover why /etc/rpm/platform is incorrect. Since
> > the file is in an rpm directory, shall I look at rpm? I promise *not* to
> > begin another thread like this one! I'm a nice guy, really!
> > 
> 
> This file (/etc/rpm/platform) is created by anaconda on install and is 
> NOT owned by RPM or any other package.  It is USED by rpm to determine 
> your real arch where there are possibly multiple arches (based on your 
> processor type).
> 
> I[3,4,5,6]86 packages can coexist with each other in an i386 distro 
> install, however you can not install an i386 package and another 
> i[4,5,6]86 package with the same Name and Epoch-Version-Release (EVR) at 
> the same time.  On Red Hat based distros, /etc/rpm/platform is used to 
> define the main arch where more than one (based on the processor) could 
> be main.
> 
> Also I[3,4,5,6]86 packages can exist in an x86_64 arch install and 
> I[3,4,5,6]86 packages can exist in an ia64 arch install. These (x86_64 
> and ia64) are 64bit/32bit library (aka multilib) arches.  They can have 
> lib64 and lib directories and have both an i[3,4,5,6]86 package and an 
> x86_64 (or ia64) package installed that have the same Name and EVR.
> 
> Other examples of 32bit/64bit (multilib) arches are s390 and s390x, ppc 
> and ppc64, and finally sparc and sparc64.  In each of these you can have 
> a 32bit (lib) and a 64bit (lib64) package of the same Name and EVR 
> installed at the same time.
> 
> 
> So, on x86_64, you CAN have glibc.x86_64 and glibc.i686. On sparc, you 
> CAN have glibc.sparc and glibc.sparc64 .. but on i386 you CAN NOT have 
> glibc.i386 and glibc.i686.
> 
> I can think of nothing that will (or should) change that file 
> (/etc/rpm/platform) except running anaconda (the installer from a CentOS 
> CD / DVD).
> 
> If something does modify that file it is definitely a bug.  Well, if you 
> are BUILDING files with rpmbuild then sometimes on some of the multilib 
> arches you might want to change /etc/rpm/platform to get specific 
> results ... but that would be a controlled process and I know of no 
> packages that do it automatically.
> 
> Some of the links by Ross seem to indicate that unixODBC-devel might 
> impact /etc/rpm/platform ... however the version i386 version in 
> centos-5 does not seem to as I have installed it several times for 
> testing and it did not change my /etc/rpm/platform.
> 
> I have looked at several i386 machines, and all of them have an 
> /etc/rpm/platform that is created on the install date, none of them have 
> a file that has been modified.
> 
> If we can nail down something that changed /etc/rpm/platform it would be 
> good, as that file should never change.

Thanks again Johnny for the info. The only non-rpm I recall installing
was the cups *.tgs for my printer which I had to compile. :-(
-- 
Bob Taylor