Andreas Gruenbacher wrote:

On Thursday, 2 October 2008 9:59:11 Dave Plater wrote:

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Hi, I'm just going through the beta 2 update packages in the new factory and I see yast wants to install three kernel packages :- kernel-pae - Kernel with PAE Support, kernel-pae-base - Kernel with PAE Support - base modules and kernel-pae-extra - Kernel with PAE Support - extra modules.

Yes, that's correct.

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Where can I find information on what has happened to the kernel in opensuse?

Well, what you are saying above is mostly the information that it takes I guess. In the changelog there is this entry:

------------------------------------------------------------------- Sat Sep 27 19:25:06 CEST 2008 - agruen@suse.de

- Split the binary kernel packages into three parts: + kernel-$flavor-base: very reduced hardware support, intended to be used in virtual machine images + kernel-$flavor: extends the base package; contains all kernel modules we can support + kernel-$flavor-extra: all other kernel modules which may be useful, but which we cannot support.

This change was done in a way so that users will end up with the expected result when using the "old" package names, and package dependencies will take care of the rest.

There are still a few issues to work out with package dependencies and KMPs which I am working on right now (at the moment, KMPs will depend solely on kernel-$flavor-base which is incorrect); this will be fixed shortly.

Thanks, Andreas Thanks very much for the explanation. I'll keep an open eye for problems and open a bug. Regards Dave P

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Am Donnerstag, 2. Oktober 2008 schrieb Andreas Gruenbacher:

On Thursday, 2 October 2008 10:37:40 Dave Plater wrote:

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Thanks very much for the explanation. I'll keep an open eye for problems and open a bug.

Thanks! I hope things will be pretty painless.

Unfortunately there is at least one problem. The filesystem driver support of the base package is also stripped down to ext3 and jbd. If you are running a system with rootfilesystem not being one of these filesystems, the installation of the kernel base package will throw an error message, because mkinitrd cannot include the filesystem driver for that filesystem into initrd. This is fixed later when installing the default package ( https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=431703 ) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-kernel+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-kernel+help@opensuse.org

On Thursday, 2 October 2008 20:43:00 Markus Koßmann wrote:

Am Donnerstag, 2. Oktober 2008 schrieb Andreas Gruenbacher:

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On Thursday, 2 October 2008 10:37:40 Dave Plater wrote:

...

Thanks very much for the explanation. I'll keep an open eye for problems and open a bug.

Thanks! I hope things will be pretty painless.

Unfortunately there is at least one problem. The filesystem driver support of the base package is also stripped down to ext3 and jbd.

Yes, the base package is supposed to be very minimal, so that you can use it for building small virtual machine images.

If you are running a system with rootfilesystem not being one of these filesystems, the installation of the kernel base package will throw an error message, because mkinitrd cannot include the filesystem driver for that filesystem into initrd.

Thanks, I didn't notice that mkinitrd handles different missing modules differently. (It only warns for some other modules; I did not think of testing this case as well.)

This is fixed later when installing the default package ( https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=431703 )

Yes, that's the expected result. I know of no good way to tell when an initrd should be created and when not: in some cases the -base package will be enough, in others the main package, and in still others, the -extra package will be needed. In the %post script we don't know if this is the last package, or if another package will follow. So the best we can do, I believe, is to warn and skip ahead if mkinitrd finds that modules are missing. Thanks, Andreas -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-kernel+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-kernel+help@opensuse.org

On Thu, 2008-10-02 at 21:44 +0200, Andreas Jaeger wrote:

Andreas Gruenbacher writes:

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On Thursday, 2 October 2008 20:43:00 Markus Koßmann wrote:

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Am Donnerstag, 2. Oktober 2008 schrieb Andreas Gruenbacher:

...

On Thursday, 2 October 2008 10:37:40 Dave Plater wrote:

...

Thanks very much for the explanation. I'll keep an open eye for problems and open a bug.

Thanks! I hope things will be pretty painless.

Unfortunately there is at least one problem. The filesystem driver support of the base package is also stripped down to ext3 and jbd.

Yes, the base package is supposed to be very minimal, so that you can use it for building small virtual machine images.

...

If you are running a system with rootfilesystem not being one of these filesystems, the installation of the kernel base package will throw an error message, because mkinitrd cannot include the filesystem driver for that filesystem into initrd.

Thanks, I didn't notice that mkinitrd handles different missing modules differently. (It only warns for some other modules; I did not think of testing this case as well.)

...

This is fixed later when installing the default package ( https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=431703 )

Yes, that's the expected result.

I know of no good way to tell when an initrd should be created and when not: in some cases the -base package will be enough, in others the main package, and in still others, the -extra package will be needed. In the %post script we don't know if this is the last package, or if another package will follow. So the best we can do, I believe, is to warn and skip ahead if mkinitrd finds that modules are missing.

That's ugly. I see it's not a trivial task, so I suggest to ask the packaging experts (e.g. on opensuse-packaging) on how to fix this in a better way,

I think it's still the same recurring problem with system update after package installation. On the one hand you don't want to run all SUSEconfig scripts after each update, on the other hand there are some actions which you don't want to run in %post. I've already suggested that each SUSEconfig script should be controlled by a flag. Before starting an update, all flags should be reset, but each package may set a flag (or more flags) to force a corresponding SUSEconfig script to be run after all packages are updated. In this case, we would have a mkinitrd SUSEconfig script, and all kernel packages would set its run flag in their %post sections. So, mkinitrd would be run only once and only on kernel updates. Just my two cents, Petr Tesarik -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-kernel+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-kernel+help@opensuse.org

On Thursday 02 October 2008 02:45:09 Andreas Gruenbacher wrote:

Thanks! I hope things will be pretty painless.

Is the change to mkinitrd related to this kernel change in that it appears to include every HBA driver in the initrd? (/etc/sysconfig/kernel:INITRD_MODULES only specifies "pata_amd sata_nv jbd ext3 dm_mod dm_snapshot edd sd_mod" but I have about 15 lines of HBA drivers listed as being included in the initrd) This has increased the initrd to nearly 9MB. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-kernel+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-kernel+help@opensuse.org