On Jan 14, 2016 9:34 AM, "Nicolas Chauvet" <kwiz...@gmail.com> wrote: > > 2016-01-14 18:05 GMT+01:00 Neal Gompa <ngomp...@gmail.com>: >> >> On Thu, Jan 14, 2016 at 11:01 AM, Reindl Harald <h.rei...@thelounge.net> wrote: >> > >> > Am 14.01.2016 um 16:56 schrieb Neal Gompa: >> >> >> >> I've recently been wondering why we haven't allowed kernel module >> >> packages in Fedora since Fedora 8. I've tried searching through our >> >> wiki and the mailing list, but I haven't come up with any concrete >> >> reasons for why we disallow them. >> >> >> >> If it is perhaps the issue of keeping things in sync with kernels we >> >> provide (that is, maintainers didn't/couldn't keep up with new kernels >> >> being pushed during a release cycle), then I think the situation has >> >> changed. >> >> >> >> We have two tools that can help us in this regard: akmod and Koschei, >> >> both came after our policy change to disallow kernel modules. >> > >> > >> > akmod is a dirty hack and fails often enough for rpmfusion stuff >> > >> > additionally you should *never* need GCC and devel packages installed on a >> > normal enduser system for a ton of reasons >> >> The most common reason that akmod fails is the same reason dkms often >> fails: the correct kernel-devel isn't installed. For whatever reason, >> there's no logic in DNF to handle this case properly. Of course, to be >> fair, this problem happens in Yum too, but since Yum isn't actively >> supported in Fedora anymore, it's not as much of a concern. > > > Maybe this particular concern can be addressed in DNF with a plugin ? > > The way I've previously worded a possible solution is to have a yum/dnf plugin for akmod. > This plugin will select the appropriate kernel-devel based on the kernel that is currently installed. > ( https://bugzilla.rpmfusion.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3386 ). > > But this dnf plugin can be useful by default in fedora, since the kernel-devel issue can rise when one user install a particular development group where kernel-devel is needed. > (user typically ends with kernel-debug-devel instead of the one for their kernel variant that can also be kernel-lpae or else).
There are two issues here, I think: 1. Is Fedora okay, in principle, with shipping out-of-tree modules? I won't comment on #1. (I also won't comment on Secure Boot issues.) 2. Assuming that shipping an out-of-tree module is okay, is akmod a good mechanism? I would argue strongly that akmod is *not* a good mechanism. Clearly any end-user-box-builds-modules system needs the package manager to pull in the right devel stuff. This is clearly a solvable problem. But akmod in particular has a really nasty built-in assumption: it assumes that the running kernel came from an RPM at all. For people who write kernels, this utterly sucks. For example, I have no intention of rpm-ifying every test kernel I build for my laptop. I install them according to the standard arrangement, which "make install" can do just fine. There are symlinks in standard places that a kmod build system could find. Akmod can't do that. Akmod also can't figure out what to make its freshly-built rpm depend on because there is no correct answer. I think that, if Fedora were to adopt a kmod build system: it should have a QA requirement: if you "make modules_install && make install" a kernel and boot into it, the kmod system should work. Akmod fails utterly in that scenario. --Andy
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