[Arm-dev] CentosArm Kernel

Tue Jun 7 14:26:33 UTC 2016
Johnny Hughes <johnny at centos.org>

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.

Thanks,
Johnny Hughes


-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 198 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/arm-dev/attachments/20160607/9d7e954f/attachment-0006.sig>