Description of problem: RHEL 5.2 kernel RPM doesn't have dependency with hwdata-0.211-1 RPM. My understanding is, starting from 5.2 kernel, 5.2 kernel can uses e1000e driver. But if I don't update hwdata, the older hwdata does not include device information about e1000e. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): kernel-2.6.18-92. How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Update kernel 2.6.18-92 or later. Actual results: Install succesfully with older version of hwdata. Expected results: In order to support e1000e driver, 5.2 kernel and hwdata-0.211-1 need to be updated at the same time.
hwdata in RHEL-5.2 doesn't contain any mappings between device id and module to load. It just contains pci.ids which allows us to print out human readable device information for each device (lspci, lsusb). You don't need to update hwdata at all if you don't use p.e. lspci. The kernel works fine without an updated hwdata package, nonetheless we update the device listings for each RHEL update anyway.