[Beowulf] Repenting for sins against Dell (on good Friday, no less)

[Skylar Thompson]

Chris Samuel wrote:
> ----- "Skylar Thompson" <skylar at cs.earlham.edu> wrote:
>
>   
>> It's useful because it will automatically build and install existing
>> kernel modules for newly-installed kernels. Many vendors ship drivers
>> as RPMs separate from the kernel, so they won't get updated when the
>> kernel is updated unless you use something like dkms.
>>     
>
> Problem is that DKMS won't help if the kernel developers
> have changed the fundamental structures in the kernel (as
> they are wont to do) and the out-of-tree module you have
> breaks as a result.
>
>   

Indeed. Using a distribution like RHEL mitigates this somewhat since
RedHat seems to do a good job of keeping the kernel version the same and
just back-porting patches non-disruptively. I have yet to see dkms fail
when moving in a single major release of RHEL. If we do have to upgrade
a major release, it's easier just to kickstart and start using dkms
after the kickstart.


-- 
-- Skylar Thompson (skylar at cs.earlham.edu)
-- http://www.cs.earlham.edu/~skylar/


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