On 10/04/2015 10:57 AM, Ned Slider wrote: > There is no responsibility on Red Hat to maintain drivers disabled in > the RHEL7 kernel, so if CentOS enables drivers for a 32-bit kernel build > that are disabled by default in the RHEL kernel, then CentOS would need > to take responsibility/ownership for maintaining those drivers within > the CentOS kernel, backporting security fixes as necessary. > > That is a very different proposition than just rebuilding upstream > sources, requiring a very different skill set and resources. > > Further, down the line you will most likely find that the driver won't > compile when enabled. For example, the wireless stack has been updated > in the RHEL7.2beta kernel from kernel-4.1-rc6, yet the b43 driver in the > kernel source will still be from the original 3.10.0 branch. It's > unlikely to compile and will probably need backporting from 4.1. > > Your best bet is probably to backport the driver yourself and build it > out of tree - a lot simpler than building a whole kernel just for one > driver. All very good points, but I have never pulled a module and built it out of tree before, and so right now the easier proposition for me is to just tweak a config file and try to rebuild the entire kernel. At some point I may try to do what you're suggesting. I did have a look and find these directions to help me: https://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/BuildingKernelModules ...the above link will likely be my next step after just trying to rebuild the kernel itself. Peter