CentOS - Sep 2015 - Rebuilding a Centos 6.2 netinstall initrd with an updated driver?

Hi all,

It seems that with the release of the X99 motherboards, a lot of vendors
are shifting away from using Realtek ethernet on board NICs and using
Intel. Our main distro. on the floor is Centos 6.2 for numerous reasons.
Efforts are being made toward 7.1, but not there yet.

Anyway, the new Intel NICs are recognised by Centos 6.6 netinstall ISO when
booting, but not Centos 6.2. I have had the idea of unpacking the initrd
and using the e1000/e1000e drivers from 6.6, and updating the 6.2 initrd.
This has not worked so far, but I'm hoping I've missed a step.

I have:
1) unpacked both initrd's
2) updated modules.* from the 6.2 initrd to match 6.6 for the relevant
modules/dependent modules
3) updated the pci.ids file
4) chrooted, run `depmod -a -v`
5) rebuilt the initrd

6.2 still fails to see the NIC. Is there a step I've missed here? Do I have
to concern myself with the kernel(vmlinuz) file too?

On 09/11/2015 08:54 AM, Rory Falloon wrote:
> It seems that with the release of the X99 motherboards, a lot of vendors
> are shifting away from using Realtek ethernet on board NICs and using
> Intel. Our main distro. on the floor is Centos 6.2 for numerous reasons.
> Efforts are being made toward 7.1, but not there yet.
> ... but I'm hoping I've missed a step.
>
Hi, Rory,

You need to be on 6.7, not 6.2.  There are more security and bug fixes 
in 6.7 over 6.2 than just a NIC driver enhancement.  There are probably 
very few reasons to stay at 6.2 versus 6.7, and many more reasons to 
update to 6.7 posthaste.

Yes, you need the newer kernel, and you may need other pieces of 6.7 as 
well for the newer kernel to even work.

CentOS does not and never has supported staying at a particular point 
release.  If you need this functionality, CentOS is not the right 
distribution for you; try Scientific Linux, which is built from the same 
sources and does feature a certain amount of support for being able to 
pin at a particular point release.

Thanks for the thoughts. I will not be updating to Centos 6.7 across 200
workstations when Centos 7 is close on the horizon. I've had to use Centos
6.6 for two other non-standard machines in the last few months which is why
I was talking of using it again here. I'd rather not have three CentOS
distributions on the floor, two is enough.

Thanks for confirming what else I would need to do what I want to achieve.
It looks like I will go with Centos 6.6 (or 6.7, if I have to..) for the
workstations that *need* it due to the driver issue, and go from there.

On Fri, Sep 11, 2015 at 11:22 AM, Lamar Owen <lowen at pari.edu> wrote:
> On 09/11/2015 08:54 AM, Rory Falloon wrote:
>
>> It seems that with the release of the X99 motherboards, a lot of
vendors
>> are shifting away from using Realtek ethernet on board NICs and using
>> Intel. Our main distro. on the floor is Centos 6.2 for numerous
reasons.
>> Efforts are being made toward 7.1, but not there yet.
>> ... but I'm hoping I've missed a step.
>>
>> Hi, Rory,
>
> You need to be on 6.7, not 6.2.  There are more security and bug fixes in
> 6.7 over 6.2 than just a NIC driver enhancement.  There are probably very
> few reasons to stay at 6.2 versus 6.7, and many more reasons to update to
> 6.7 posthaste.
>
> Yes, you need the newer kernel, and you may need other pieces of 6.7 as
> well for the newer kernel to even work.
>
> CentOS does not and never has supported staying at a particular point
> release.  If you need this functionality, CentOS is not the right
> distribution for you; try Scientific Linux, which is built from the same
> sources and does feature a certain amount of support for being able to pin
> at a particular point release.
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