On Wed, Jun 17, 2009 at 2:54 PM, Shad L. Lords <slords at lordsfam.net> wrote: > > All the CentOS-4 kmod-xfs have now been promoted to the extras/centosplus > > repositories. > > To call these packages kABI tracking is misleading. They are kernel > version independent but they don't track the kABI like the el5 packages > do. Notice the difference below. > > [root at server 4.7]# rpm -qp --requires kmod-xfs-0.4-2.el4.i686.rpm > rpmlib(VersionedDependencies) <= 3.0.3-1 > /sbin/depmod > /sbin/depmod > module-init-tools >= 3.1-0.pre5.3.10 > /bin/sh > /bin/sh > /bin/sh > rpmlib(PayloadFilesHavePrefix) <= 4.0-1 > rpmlib(CompressedFileNames) <= 3.0.4-1 > [root at server 5.3]# rpm -qp --requires kmod-xfs-0.4-2.i686.rpm > rpmlib(VersionedDependencies) <= 3.0.3-1 > /sbin/depmod > /sbin/depmod > /bin/sh > /bin/sh > /bin/sh > rpmlib(PayloadFilesHavePrefix) <= 4.0-1 > rpmlib(CompressedFileNames) <= 3.0.4-1 > kernel(rhel5_fs_ga) = b96eba087460900b3aa6064930cf23d58908d4d6 (snip) The concept of "kABI-tracking" may be still new in CentOS-4 and is not mature IIHO. Unlike CentOS-5, CentOS-4 does not offer a full set of RPM packaging macros and the kernels do not have kABI meta information. Therefore, CentOS-4 kmods will not have kernel symbols as you showed above. The weak-modules script was implemented in CentOS-4.7 by backporting from CentOS-5. It obtains modversions from a module and uses it to determine whether the module is kABI compatible with the kernel it is checking against. So, whether or not this whole process in CentOS-4 can be called "kABI-tracking" may be debatable. Personally, if a module is kernel-independent and installs correctly only in compatible kernels, it is tracking the kABI. But that may or may not be so depending on how you look at it. Akemi