[Arm-dev] Rebase to kernel 4.9.x (LTS) for armhfp : call for testers

Wed Mar 1 13:21:27 UTC 2017
Robert Moskowitz <rgm at htt-consult.com>


On 02/28/2017 04:28 AM, Fabian Arrotin wrote:
> Hi guys,
>
> As mentioned in the other thread about new kernel (basically to fix the
> dccp cve issue), I had a look at the 4.4.x branch, but thought also
> about a rebase to 4.9.x (also upstream LTS at kernel.org)
>
> For AltArch (centos 7 i386), Johnny built a 4.9.13 kernel and so I
> reused it for armhfp
> It also makes sense to rebase to 4.9.x for rpi2/rpi3 as the rpi
> foundation also rebased to 4.9 and so confirmed to me that they don't
> maintain 4.4.x (even if they still accept Pull Requests).
>
> So we have now 4.9.13 available for both rpi and generic.
>
> The following /etc/yum.repos.d/testing-kernel.repo would do it :
>
> [kernel-testing]
> name=CentOS Kernels for armhfp testing
> baseurl=https://buildlogs.centos.org/centos/7/kernel/$basearch/kernel-$kvariant/
> enabled=0
> gpgcheck=0
>
> [firmware]
> name=firmware
> baseurl=https://armv7.dev.centos.org/repodir/arm-kernels/linux-firmware-20170213/
> enabled=1
> gpgcheck=0
>
>
> After that a simple yum update --enablerepo=kernel-testing would bring
> it to the node
>
> For rpi, nothing to be done
> For the other boards, I've added an update-boot tool to automatically
> modify extlinux.conf. but you need the updated centos-userland-release pkg :
> https://armv7.dev.centos.org/repodir/c71611-updates-1/centos-userland-release/7-3.1611.el7.centos.0.2/armv7hl/centos-userland-release-7-3.1611.el7.centos.0.2.armv7hl.rpm
>
> Worth noting that the actual 4.9.13 will *not* call it in the %post rpm
> transaction (yet) but if that tool works for everybody, we'll add it for
> newer kernels.
>
> Any feedback is welcome, but for the kernel I'd like to push that asap
> to signing/release (so the more feedback, the faster we'll have it
> released) ;-)

I just tried to install this on a server that is running with 4.4.42-202.

No update to the kernel.  Only proposes the 17 firmware files.

So I suspect there is some problem with the date of this update, making 
it earlier than even 4.4.42-202.

Separate question about kernels.

When I *DO* update to a new kernel, do I have to reboot to be using the 
new kernel.  Or are the new modules/libraries just called in while 
running?  I never did figure this out...

thanks