I'm using CentOS5 64bit on a system with a 3ware 9650SE card.
I installed the OS using the driver disk files provided by 3ware. It worked fine with the original CentOS5 kernel.
After doing a "yum update", which also installed an updated kernel, the system didn't work after a reboot, using the new kernel. I rebooted the old kernel, moved the 3w-9xxx.ko file from /lib/modules/2.6.18-8.el5/updates to /lib/modules/2.6.18-8.1.1.el5/updates then did this:
mkinitrd -v -f /boot/initrd-2.6.18-8.1.1.el5.img 2.6.18-8.1.1.el5
The initrd image for the new kernel was rebuilt without apparent issues. I booted up the new kernel and now it seems to work fine.
So here's my question: The system _appears_ to work fine with the updated kernel and the driver module from 3ware that was made for the original kernel. But this is a machine that is supposed to be very reliable, so I'm wondering, do I have to rebuild the driver for the new kernel, or can I just use the existing driver version without problems? The emphasis here is on reliability.