Installing "old" version of kernel-devel?
 

Hey Guys-

I've run into an issue where the Nvidia installer isn't compiling a compatible version of the drivers for my kernel. According to what I can decipher (someone who bothered to answer my post on the Nvidia linux forums) this is probably due to not having the right kernel-devel header files for my kernel. Anyone know how I can get archived versions of these?

I'm running RHEL 3, kernel 2.4.21-53.ELsmp. The CentOS 3 repositories I have defined don't include any kernel-devel files (or so sayeth yum) and all I can find anywhere else is the 2.6.x kernel-devel packages.

If I'm on the wrong track with all of this, please let me know as well, I'm still trying to get a handle on RHEL.

Here's the other post, nobody has replied in a couple of days so I figured I'd look for some help here.

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=111751

Thanks for any help you can give me!

I usually go here to search for RPM packages in the advanced mode, they have the link to pretty much every one that exist. When I type: kernel-devel-2.4.21-53 in the search field and put a check in the RedHatEL 3 box....it finds nothing. What is the output of the command: uname -r ?

If you put: kernel-2.4.21-53 in the search field you'll get some hits. May have to use the .src package for compiling modules.

Alright, I figured out my issues.

Turns out kernel-devel doesn't exist until kernel 2.6; it's basically just a collection of extra header files necessary for some compilations of drivers. Before 2.6, those were included in the kernel-source package. The reason why I couldn't install was because I was trying to install while in the 2.4.21-53.ELsmp kernel, which doesn't have a specific source package that I was able to find. By booting into 2.4.21-53.EL and including the 2.4.21-53 source, the installer was able to compile the right drivers that were able to be used by RHEL 3.

Thanks for the help, it was a not-very-well-documented sort of issue that I finally managed to figure out.