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

[Chris Samuel]

----- "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.

Even worse if that's a binary only module (witness nVidia
having to push a new driver out to cope with the 2.6.30
kernels).

The best solution is to prod your vendor into pushing their
module upstream into the mainline kernel so those fixes are
done for them (free maintenance work!); or else buy systems
that are not reliant on out-of-tree modules (which we are
lucky enough to have managed to do recently).

cheers,
Chris
-- 
Christopher Samuel - (03) 9925 4751 - Systems Manager
 The Victorian Partnership for Advanced Computing
 P.O. Box 201, Carlton South, VIC 3053, Australia
VPAC is a not-for-profit Registered Research Agency