[CentOS-docs] Article on building i586 CentOS-5 kernel

Mon Jan 11 13:22:32 UTC 2010
Alan Bartlett <ajb at elrepo.org>

2010/1/11 Karanbir Singh <mail-lists at karan.org>:

> On 01/11/2010 06:17 AM, Timothy Lee wrote:
>>      * http://wiki.centos.org/TimothyLee/centos5_i586_patch
>>
>> These instructions have been successfully tested against the
>> 2.6.18-164.10.1.el5 kernel.  All comments are welcomed.
>
> sounds good :)

+1 (agreed).

>> I have two questions for the development team:
>>
>>      * Is this article suitable for publication on the wiki?
>
> I'd say no, not here in the user facing wiki

As !(member of the development team) but a kernel person in general
and co-maintainer of the CentOS wiki kernel related documentation I
say -1 to Timothy's suggestion and, hence, +1 (agreed) to KB's
comment.

>>      * Can the changes mentioned in that article be incorporated into the
>>        stock SRPM?  (As far as I know, non-i586 builds should not be
>>        affected)
>
> No, but there is a big open door in the c5plus kernel window. That would
> be the best place for this.

As KB has said, obviously no to the standard, core, CentOS SRPM but
quite possibly in the C-Plus kernel. Akemi, do you have any comment on
this suggestion?

> However, expanding a bit ( and this conversation might be better for
> -devel rather than -docs ).
>
> Is the modified kernel the the only bit of change you need for i586
> support ? I'd think a glibc.i586 might be worth doing as well. And there
> were a few other packages that were required to be patched on c4 to make
> it work for i586. How many of those are needed here as well ?  And there
> are a lot of patches in the kernel tree that might not impact the i586
> code at all. eg. whats the state of xen in this i586 kernel ?
>
> If there is reasonable interest in running a i586 tree, then imho, a SIG
> dedicated to this would be the best route to go. It would also make it
> possible to have a i586 specific tree that can be maintained in parallel
> to the main core distro.

Hmm. More good points that need careful consideration. So, depending
upon interest, this may turn out to be a personal project for Timothy
just to run C5 on those few of his systems.

Alan.