From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.2.1) Gecko/20030225 Description of problem: kernel-source contains: (1) the kernel code with patches, including (2) the kernel public headers needed to build modules outside the source tree (via /lib/modules/`uname -r`/build/include); (3) the .config files used for each kernel variant. These are all packaged into one 38MB file. The common uses of kernel-source are: (1) build a third-party kernel module; (2) build one's own kernel using a RHL .config as a starting point. If someone has built their own kernel module then the kernel-source file needs to be downloaded for each updated kernel and the kernel module rebuilt. This is a significant download for modem users. Could thought be given to further dividing kernel-source into: kernel-source-headers (the public headers in linux/include) kernel-source-config (the .config files) kernel-source-code (the rest) At the present it is difficult to distribute the source for a small GPLed module. People keep asking for precompiled binaries. Asking people why it doesn't seem that: rpmbuild --rebuild x-module.src.rpm is beyond them, but that the kernel-source download is massive. If we need to provide pre-compiled binaries for each RHL kernel variant then it's hard to convince management to release or GPL the code in the first place. After all the costs for the build platforms (real or VMWare) need to be met somehow. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Upgrade kernel as per security advisory (now kernel-source...rpm on CD is useless for building modules) 2. Download updated kernel-source...rpm using 56Kbps modem 3. Wait 90+ minutes for download 4. Recompile <10KB module in seconds. Actual Results: Users were frustrated at 1.5 hours to install a new driver Expected Results: Users were delighted Additional info:
we're investigation solutions for this that don't break back compat (eg the ability to use 1 codebase for errata for 7.1 -> RHL9) Also, if you module is GPL, why not submit it for inclusion in RHL9 itself ? (and to marcelo's 2.4.2x kernel tree)
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