On Oct 23, 2009, at 8:05 AM, Rainer Traut tr.ml@gmx.de wrote:
Hi,
the topic is an excerpt of the 5.4 release notes and raises a question.
I have a i386 server here, that has been running for nearly two years with xfs module from extras repo. When lookin at the module it was build against 2.6.18-92.1.13.el5.
Question is, is it still safe to use this module with 5.4? Or should I switch back to a CentosPlus kmod and an older kernel?
The module does KABI tracking through weak-modules, so if it wasn't compatible, it wouldn't add a link to it on the new kernel and someone would need to recompile it for the newer kernel.
KABI tracking adds dependencies to kernel API by creating hashes of the API prototypes and weak-modules compares those to the hashes of the installed/installing kernel's API prototypes, if they match it creates a link to the installed module under /lib/modules/<kver>/weak- updates.
These KABI tracking modules. compiled on different kernel versions, stick around after the kernel has been uninstalled, so don't remove old /lib/modules directories without first making sure a KABI module isn't there.
-Ross