Bug 1962

Summary: Difficult to use non-obvious /lib/modules/<foo> module directories
Product: [Retired] Red Hat Raw Hide Reporter: Chris Siebenmann <cks-rhbugzilla>
Component: modutilsAssignee: Cristian Gafton <gafton>
Status: CLOSED NOTABUG QA Contact:
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
Priority: high    
Version: 1.0   
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OS: Linux   
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Fixed In Version: Doc Type: Bug Fix
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Last Closed: 1999-04-07 17:02:08 UTC Type: ---
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Description Chris Siebenmann 1999-04-03 09:33:31 UTC 
The Rawhide modutils-2.1.121 appears to be compiled to
use only
	/lib/modules/`uname -r`
and	/lib/modules
as the search path for modules, unlike the RedHat 5.2
modutils, which seem to have been compiled to check
/lib/modules/preferred as well (and first, from the
looks of things).

 The net effect of this change seems to be to make it
practically impossible to use the old scheme where
/lib/modules/preferred was symlinked to the right
place. I believe this is undesirable; I don't want
to be frobbing EXTRAVERSION in kernel Makefiles for
every variant I test-compile (among other things,
this will make patches from kernel version to kernel
version fail to apply cleanly!).

 I suggest that RedHat revert/enhance/whatever modutils
to check /lib/modules/preferred again.
Comment 1 Cristian Gafton 1999-04-05 23:47:59 UTC 
You can modprobe modules only against the running kernel, and now we
have a very sure way of identifying the running kernel, so the
preferred hack is no longer needed.
Comment 2 Chris Siebenmann 1999-04-06 20:09:59 UTC 
If the preferred hack is no longer supposed to be there at all,
you might want to delete the stanza in /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit that
falls back to it.

 Personally, I think that relying on uname -r/EXTRAVERSION is a
bit fragile in an environment where people may build their own
kernels, but clearly RedHat disagrees.
Comment 3 Bill Nottingham 1999-04-06 22:30:59 UTC 
it has been removed in the latest initscripts (removed about 3/29
or so).
Comment 4 Cristian Gafton 1999-04-07 17:02:59 UTC 
Relying on EXTRAVERSIOn is a whole lot more stable than the previous
preffered hack. This is what EXTRAVERSION is for and it is not
terribly difficult to change that value when compiling a customized
kernel.