[Centos] CentOS 4 installer kernel version

Johnny Hughes
Thu, 03 Mar 2005 22:08:21 -0000

On Thu, 2005-03-03 at 10:43 -0800, Jesse wrote:
> I noticed after an installation of CentOS 4 (final) that the kernel is a
> later release that the RHEL4 kernel. It''s 2.6.9-5.0.3 instead of
2.6.9-5.
>
> >From what I can tell (from booting off the CDs in rescue mode), the
> installer also is running under 2.6.9-5.0.3.
>
> I was wondering what the reasoning for that is. I thought one of the goals
> was to be as close a match to RHEL4 as possible. Having matched
''releases''
> with different kernel versions seems to be a very large change.
>
> Doesn''t this break the use of RHEL4 driver disks? They''ll
all be made for
> the RHEL4 release kernel, version 2.6.9-5. Or do those already not work
> under CentOS4 for some reason, even with the same kernel version? It
> certainly is much nicer to be able to use vendor provided driver disks
> that always building your own.
>
> Sorry if the questions seem silly -- I''m more from whitebox land
and
> testing the waters of here, and trying to figure out what kind of things
> are done differently here.
>
> Thanks and best regards,
>
> ---
> Jesse <j@lumiere.net>

The 2.6.9-5 kernel has security issues and RedHat released a security
update for that kernel.  It is the normal CentOS policy to take the
latest packages at the time of an ISO build and include them in the
distro.  (This is the same thing that is done for the quarterly update
releases).

Driver disks that are only for the 2.6.9-5 kernels, will indeed, not
work with the 2.6.9-5.0.3 kernel.  Most will include source and
instructions for making a driver for other kernels, however ... as RHEL
also releases updated ISOs every quarter that have their latest kernels,
and the driver provider probably won''t generate a new disc every
quarter.

If someone absolutely can''t get a kernel to install any other way, and
they can''t build the kernel they need, I will assist them by either
compiling the kernel they need or the driver.

--
Johnny Hughes
<http://www.HughesJR.com/>