[CentOS-devel] openafs status?

Tue Aug 18 00:09:39 UTC 2015
Jason Edgecombe <jason at rampaginggeek.com>

On 08/15/2015 07:52 PM, Ned Slider wrote:
> On 15/08/15 22:41, Jason Edgecombe wrote:
>> On 08/15/2015 10:56 AM, Ned Slider wrote:
>>> On 15/08/15 14:27, Jonathan Billings wrote:
>>>> On Aug 15, 2015, at 9:10 AM, Jason Edgecombe
>>>> <jason at rampaginggeek.com>  wrote:
>>>>> What's the plan for fixing CBS to accommodate this? If I had a spare
>>>>> afternoon, what could I do to move this forward?
>>>> Really, the end goal is to have the kmod-openafs packages built for
>>>> every kernel release as it comes out, without removing the existing
>>>> kmod-openafs from the repo.  This is why I separated it out from the
>>>> openafs spec/srpm, because it will need to be rebuilt every time
>>>> there is a new kernel.  However, OpenAFS users want to have
>>>> historical kmods available.
>>>>
>>> Given that you really don't seemed to have moved forward in the last
>>> year, I would reiterate what I said a year ago:
>>>
>>> http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos-devel/2014-September/012047.html
>>>
>>> I really don't understand why you would not want to use the framework
>>> Red Hat provides to solve exactly this problem. You are trying to solve
>>> a problem that is largely already solved.
>>>
>>> Worst case scenario is you'd need to rebuild kmod-openafs for major
>>> point releases every 9-12 months (e.g, 6.5, 6.6, 6.7; and/or 7.0, 7.1,
>>> ...) where the kABI is broken for non-whitelisted symbols used by
>>> OpenAFS. That has to be a preferable solution for OpenAFS users than
>>> rebuilding against each and every kernel release.
>>>
>> Does yum check and prevent or warn you when installing a kABI module for
>> a non-matching kernel? How do I know which kmods match my kernel?
>>
> No, yum will only warn on symbols that may be missing, for example on
> older kernels.
>
> Look to see if the module weak links against the kernel in the
> corresponding weak-updates directory.
>
> Sometime a module can weak link but still not be compatible but it's
> uncommon and only likely to happen when going from one point release to
> another (e.g, 6.6 to 6.7) when Red Hat have changed the kABI of a
> non-whitelisted symbol used by your module. Pre-release testing will
> pick this up. Red Hat generally do not change the kABI within a point
> release.

A few folks in the OpenAFS community have been burned by the kABI and 
don't trust it, even for point RH releases. One gentleman was even 
burned by elrepo.

Jason