On Mon, Mar 16, 2009 at 1:24 PM, Chris Miller centos@scratchspace.com wrote:
I work with a USB device that is intercepted by the USB HID driver. In order to stop this behavior, the device needs to be added to the HID blacklist (hid-core.c) and a custom kernel needs to be compiled.
If I create a CentOS specific patch, it appears I need to create the patch against an already patched source tree (i.e. after running rpmbuild -bp) because other patches exist that add items to the blacklist that would break my diff patch. Seems like this would be a never ending battle as new patches get added to new kernels.
What's the correct way to get this device added to the kernel? Do I submit my patch to the CentOS dev team, to the kernel.org folks, or both? What's the timeline (if accepted) to actually seeing this in a production kernel? On the CentOS kernel build how-to, the kABI fixes won't make it into CentOS until 5.4, and 5.3 hasn't been released yet.
CentOS will not make changes to the distro kernel because it aims to be 100% binary compatible (including bugs). However, it you submit the patch you have, it might be included in the centosplus kernel. I suggest you open a report at http://bugs.centos.org with a detailed description of the problem and upload your patch.
Another thing you want to try is to open a bugzilla upstream. If the patch is incorporated in the upstream kernel, it will then be in the CentOS kernel.
The kABI fix you mentioned is not a problem. It is just a note. You can still build custom kernels by following the instructions on the Wiki.
Akemi