Why does Fedora upgrade kernel-headers within the same major release version, but RHEL does not?

The package 'kernel-headers' is updated, whenever changes appear :

'kernel-headers' versions, example RHEL5, 2.6.18 :
-194, -238, -274, -308, -348, -371, -386, -398, -400, -402,
and -404 : '03 June 2015'.

RHEL6, 2.6.32 :
-131.015, -504.1.3, -504.3.3, -504.8.1, -504.12.2, -504.16.2, 573.1.1,
and -573.3.1 : '14 Aug 2015'.

RHEL7, 3.10.0 : -229.1.2, -229.4.2, -229.7.2, and 229.11.1 : '08 Aug 2015'.


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1 members found this post helpful.

Oh, I see. Our sysadmins must upgrade our kernel manually, we're on a newer version.

If you did upgrade the kernel manually on RHEL, would you consider it good practice to upgrade the installed kernel headers also?

For your information : The 'kernel-headers' package, /usr/include/{ asm/*, drm/*, linux/* etc.}
... is used only for compiling applications.
And : These ~665 headers are the headers that were used to compile your glibc.
So they must follow the default glibc version.
I.e. no alien update of the package 'kernel-headers' should be done !

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1 members found this post helpful.

My current development machine is Rhel 5.11, kernel 3.10

I'm a developer, my end goal is building software and helping other devs to build software. We have a variety of rhel 5&6 machines with various kernels. Our sysadmins update the kernel, but never update the kernel headers. I am trying to understand why, as it impedes me using newer kernel features. They're not forthcoming with reasons, just saying that redhat doesn't update the headers.

I guess one reason may be that they are trying to prevent binaries for an OS depending on a newer kernel than the lowest common denominator.

My question is effectively this : if you manually update a kernel for RHEL, what other packages should you update, as best practise?

Re #5.
Yes they do. Constantly. Read post #2.


See #4 : The 'kernel headers' are the headers that were used to compile your glibc.
ftp://ftp.redhat.com/redhat/linux/en...r/en/os/SRPMS/
Please see the ~33 versions / updates of glibc.


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Ok thanks for the clarification, our sys admins are being imprecise.

Regarding my other question :
> if you manually update a kernel for RHEL, what other packages should you update, as best practise?

Is the answer just kernel-headers and glibc?

Re #7.
None. There aren't any packages related to the kernel.

But : If you exclude "kernel*" in /etc/yum.conf,
then you will have no updates of the glibc related package 'kernel-headers'(-2.6.xx-xxx)
Must then be manually handled. E.g. by temporarily disabling the line exclude=kernel*


Generally about updates :
Just do # yum update ,,, whenever there are (other) updates.

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