[Ocfs2-users] Kernel independent OCFS2 packages for RHEL, Scientific Linux and CentOS

[Joel Becker]

On Sat, Jun 19, 2010 at 02:11:33AM +0200, Dag Wieers wrote:
> On Fri, 18 Jun 2010, Joel Becker wrote:
> >	Oh, my.  You provide 'ocfs2' and directly override the existing
> >modules as delivered.  Am I correct that, should a person have our ocfs2
> >package for 2.6.18-92.el5 installed and your kmod package, they will
> >actually load your kmod module instead?  Is there any way to prevent
> >this?
> 
> Well, our aim is to prevent that both packages are installed at the
> same time, because we don't want the user to not know for sure which
> package is being used. Unfortunately since the Oracle packages
> contain a kernel-version in the package name, we would have to
> Conflict or Obsolete every kernel released by Red Hat (and for each
> new released kernel, release our own kmod package), which obviously
> goes directly against our goals.

	I agree that preventing the combination is the least confusing
solution.  I also agree that specifying the conflict for each possible
version is a non-starter.

> If you see a way around that, I am happy to implement that. But at
> the moment I don't see an easy way to do that, unless the official
> kernel module packages has a set of (kernel-agnostic) virtual
> provides, honestly I haven't checked that.

	It provides 'ocfs2'.  But so do you.  

> The reason for overriding the ocfs2 module the way we do is to
> ensure that if an ELRepo package is installed, it has the priority.
> This is the standardized way to do it with kmod packages, another
> kmod package would conflict on that file preventing a 'conflict'.

	The fact that you want to have priority over what shipped in
the kernel rpm makes perfect sense.  Unfortunately, you're overriding
what's in a separate rpm.

> Beware though that the virtual provides of ocfs2 is just a mechanism
> to assist users to install ocfs2, there is no other reason.
> 
> I am open to improvements.

	I've been trying to think of ways just to know which is
loaded (eg, having your ocfs2.ko append -elrepo in the string ocfs2
prints at module load time).  But I've got nothing that shines.
	If I can think of anything, I'll let you know.

Joel

-- 

"A narcissist is someone better looking than you are."  
         - Gore Vidal

Joel Becker
Principal Software Developer
Oracle
E-mail: joel.becker at oracle.com
Phone: (650) 506-8127