[CentOS] kABI-tracking kmod-xfs for CentOS-4 (Was: Preventing hour-long fsck on ext3-filesystem)

Akemi Yagi amyagi at gmail.com
Thu Jun 18 15:20:58 UTC 2009


On Wed, Jun 17, 2009 at 2:54 PM, Shad L. Lords <slords at lordsfam.net> wrote:

> > All the CentOS-4 kmod-xfs have now been promoted to the extras/centosplus
> > repositories.
>
> To call these packages kABI tracking is misleading.  They are kernel
> version independent but they don't track the kABI like the el5 packages
> do.  Notice the difference below.
>
> [root at server 4.7]# rpm -qp --requires kmod-xfs-0.4-2.el4.i686.rpm
> rpmlib(VersionedDependencies) <= 3.0.3-1
> /sbin/depmod
> /sbin/depmod
> module-init-tools >= 3.1-0.pre5.3.10
> /bin/sh
> /bin/sh
> /bin/sh
> rpmlib(PayloadFilesHavePrefix) <= 4.0-1
> rpmlib(CompressedFileNames) <= 3.0.4-1

> [root at server 5.3]# rpm -qp --requires kmod-xfs-0.4-2.i686.rpm
> rpmlib(VersionedDependencies) <= 3.0.3-1
> /sbin/depmod
> /sbin/depmod
> /bin/sh
> /bin/sh
> /bin/sh
> rpmlib(PayloadFilesHavePrefix) <= 4.0-1
> rpmlib(CompressedFileNames) <= 3.0.4-1
> kernel(rhel5_fs_ga) = b96eba087460900b3aa6064930cf23d58908d4d6
(snip)

The concept of "kABI-tracking" may be still new in CentOS-4 and is not
mature IIHO.  Unlike CentOS-5, CentOS-4 does not offer a full set of
RPM packaging macros and the kernels do not have kABI meta
information.  Therefore, CentOS-4 kmods will not have kernel symbols
as you showed above.

The weak-modules script was implemented in CentOS-4.7 by backporting
from CentOS-5.  It obtains modversions from a module and uses it to
determine whether the module is kABI compatible with the kernel it is
checking against.

So, whether or not this whole process in CentOS-4  can be called
"kABI-tracking" may be debatable.  Personally, if a module is
kernel-independent and installs correctly only in compatible kernels,
it is tracking the kABI.  But that may or may not be so depending on
how you look at it.

Akemi



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