[PlanetCCRMA] ccrma kernel and fedora package updater

[Fernando Lopez-Lezcano]

On Fri, 2007-06-01 at 18:10 -0700, oiro@email.arizona.edu wrote:
> Hello,
> 
>  I am running ccrma with FC6. Just starting to get the hang of things. I
> definately want to thank all the people who put work into this distro!!
> 
> Some general questions about the the kernel....
> 
> 1. The Fedora package updater says there's updated kernel packages to install,
> but the kernel it's recommending is  "Update to kernel 2.6.20.11". However,
> ccrma is 2.6.21...etc. Why does fedora want to update to that kernel?  Does
> this have something to do with how ccrma is a kernel module of some sort?
> Should I install the update?

The Planet CCRMA is a full kernel, not a kernel module. But the naming
is different from the stock Fedora kernel, it is called "kernel-rt" and
not just "kernel"[*]. So, if you see an update for "kernel" then that's
for the stock Fedora kernel. You can install it or not, your choice. It
usually would not make sense if you want to just use the Planet CCRMA
kernel. Be aware that if you do, it will become the default boot kernel,
something which you can change by editing /boot/grub/grub.conf (you have
to change the "index" line to point to the zero based index of the
kernel entry you want to boot by default). 

> 2. Also, there are two broken links in
> /lib/modules/2.6.21-0143.rt1.3.fc6.ccrmart. Not sure why or what their function
> is.

Hmmm, I guess that's a mistake in the spec file (I'm using one derived
from the Fedora kernel... I'll look again to see if that's been changed
in the most recent one). Thanks for the report...

> 3. Why is the ccrma rt kernel not listed in /usr/src/kernels ? I ask because I'm
> wondering how grub knows about the ccrma kernel....

The files there are only used when building extra kernel modules for the
kernel and they are part of the (in the case of the Planet CCRMA kernel)
kernel-rt-devel package which is not installed by default. 

The info that grub uses is in its configuration
file, /boot/grub/grub.conf and the relevant files are stored in /boot

-- Fernando

[*] obligatory yum bashing: and that choice was forced on me by the fact
that yum dictates policy in the case of kernel packages. It does not
allow you to install a kernel that is older from the point of view of
rpm than the one already installed and AFAIK there is no way to override
that choice (dumb!). It may be that the newest Planet CCRMA kernel is
"older" from the point of view of rpm than the Fedora kernel and then
you can't install it with yum if the name is the same!