[Arm-dev] CentosArm Kernel

[Johnny Hughes]

On 06/07/2016 09:26 AM, Johnny Hughes wrote:
> On 06/06/2016 02:32 AM, OM Ugarcina wrote:
>> Hello Guys,
>>
>> I have a question on the roadmap for the CentosArm kernel . One of the
>> reasons why people love Centos is the fact that it enjoys a longer
>> support cycle than other distributions , which force the user to upgrade
>> the whole OS every 6 months . But at the same time Centos backports
>> important fixes , and improvements to the kernel to keep it up to date .
>> So having a long term OS combined with kernel that is maintained is a
>> very good reason for using Centos .
>>
>> So I wanted to ask : What is the strategy for the arm kernels , is there
>> going to be an active program to maintain the arm kernel ? I know that
>> the regular Centos kernel is not viable for arm , it lacks a lot of
>> support for arm hardware . We need a more modern version that is still
>> long term supported but newer . My suggestion would be to take kernel
>> 4.4 as the Centos arm main kernel . It has support for arm basic hw ,
>> and it is compatible with driver source code that is needed to be added
>> for boards such as bananapi R1 (or also known as Lamobo R1) .
>>
>> I my self am using Fedora's 4.4 kernels made for the fc22 line , but am
>> expecting soon for that to disappear once fc24 comes out . And then no
>> more kernel updates from fedora .
>>
> 
> We are maintaining what was the Fedora 4.4 kernel spec, modified to keep
> things where they belong in CentOS-7 (and not in /usr/lib, etc.) AND
> using the kernel.org upstream tree.
> 
> We have a very beta attempt at that here:
> 
> http://armv7.dev.centos.org/repodir/arm-kernels/4.4.12-301/
> 
> We are still working out the kinks ... in this case, you must still edit
> /boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf by hand .. and you must remove the old
> kernel to make room for the new one.  There is also a directory that
> contains 3 bootable kernels which looks to have a random name.  That
> directory can be removed.
> ================================================
> 
> NOTE:  If you remove the old kernel (due to size restraints) .. it is
> CRITICAL that you edit the extlinux.conf file correctly to use the new
> kernel.  It should look like this with a default image:
> 
> #Created by RootFS Build Factory
> ui menu.c32
> menu autoboot centos
> menu title centos Options
> #menu hidden
> timeout 60
> totaltimeout 600
> label centos
> 	kernel /vmlinuz-4.4.12-301.el7.armv7hl
> 	append enforcing=0 root=UUID=770af0f9-c7d9-4ae9-b024-1ba3c78d7550
> 	fdtdir /dtb-4.4.12-301.el7.armv7hl
> 	initrd /initramfs-4.4.12-301.el7.armv7hl.img
> 
> 
> None of those lines should wrap.
> 
> The UUID culd be different .. use the one already in your file.
> 
> The lines that need changes are the ones with the kernel version.
> 
> ===============================================
> 
> We think that will a grubby update we may be able to automate the
> eltlinux.conf update, but we are still testing that.
> 
> ALso .. obviously this will not work for the Raspberry Pi devices as
> they have to use their own kernels and this one does not work there.
> 

Note that there are also new xfsprogs and linux-firmware RPMs required
and a new grubby is there, though that is still in testing.

The new xfsprogs is critical to prevent xfs corruption with new kernels
.. see these bugs:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1314605
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1314795

Thanks,
Johnny Hughes

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