[CentOS-devel] CentOS-5 i586 status?

[Karanbir Singh]

Adam Foran wrote:
> On Thu, 2008-04-24 at 10:49 +0100, Karanbir Singh wrote:
>> if your installer ran far enough that it even got around to looking at
>> what kernel you need post-install, you dont need i586. hint: the
>> installer runs on a i686 kernel itself!
> 
> This doesn't seem quite right. The machine in question is currently
> running Fedora:

It boils down to one thing - the installer needs to make a decision 
based on the information it knows about and the information it can find 
as to what is the best post-install kernel to leave as the default boot 
kernel on the installed machine. ( phew, long sentence )

In this case, the CentOS installer is using the info it can gather and 
making a ( perhaps wrong ) decision that it needs a i586 kernel. The 
reason I say perhaps wrong decision is simple - The installer is built 
with the lowest-common-known-to-boot-everywhere kernel that is available 
in the distro. Since we only have i686 support, this kernel the 
installer is running on itself is the i686 kernel. And if your machine 
got to a point where its doing its thing, I'd say its a fair guess that 
the i686 kernel is fine for that machine.

To further test this theory, boot the CentOS-5 installer into rescue 
mode. Get to the shell, play around and do the same tests / enquiries 
you just did. Come up with anything interesting ?

> So I guess we have a i586 processor that will boot a i686 kernel, but
> since it is a i586 processor, the install has no hope of finding the
> packages its going to look for....

in this case, the fix is to have anaconda know about the hardware and 
get the right ( i686 ) kernel for it. I believe Daniel has already 
hinted that cpu/platform knowledge in the installer itself is going to 
need some love for the i586 stuff to WorkAsDesired

> Anyway, as I said, I'll help test any i586 installers/packages you guys
> come up with.

awesome! Ray is already making some noise to get the project resources 
allocated. Once something is up, make sure you sign up for punishment^W 
testing :D

- KB

-- 
Karanbir Singh : http://www.karan.org/  : 2522219 at icq