Hey guys, I was yum'ing something onto my computer when I saw it updating headers for newly available packages... I saw "kernel-0-2.6.6-1.427.i686" headers downloaded, and thought "Ooohh.. I wonder if that kernel will work with the binary nvidia drivers.." but then I thought, "I wonder how I can find out anything about what that package is.. release notes, and the like.." so that's my main point of this thread.

So anyway, sorry for my ignorance, but is there a central web-repository that has changelog or other similar information on each package available? I tried "yum info kernel", but the text description it spat out was
"The kernel package contains the Linux kernel (vmlinuz), the core of
the Red Hat Linux operating system. The kernel handles the basic
functions of the operating system: memory allocation, process
allocation, device input and output, etc."

Please note: I'm looking for specific information on the changelog specific to the package.. as I understand it, 2.6.6 kernels can be built in different ways, so the changelog for generic 2.6.6 would not have all the information on the options used for this particular package.

The next question is, I seem to remember from the past that some packages can't be handled perfectly by package managers.. perhaps I'm remembering a nvidia package (possibly on another distrobution) that require(s|d) a bunch of manual reconfiguration before it would work.. so if I just "yum upgrade kernel" will it work without caveats or additional hand editting on my part?

(if the kernel is suitable for the nvidia driver, I think I can follow those instructions )

Thanks for any help!

You can read the changelog at kernel.org. Here is the Nvidia Specific issue, directly from the changelog!



<akpm@osdl.org>
[PATCH] ia32: 4Kb stacks (and irqstacks) patch

From: Arjan van de Ven <arjanv@redhat.com>

Below is a patch to enable 4Kb stacks for x86. The goal of this is to

1) Reduce footprint per thread so that systems can run many more threads
(for the java people)

2) Reduce the pressure on the VM for order > 0 allocations. We see real life
workloads (granted with 2.4 but the fundamental fragmentation issue isn't
solved in 2.6 and isn't solvable in theory) where this can be a problem.
In addition order > 0 allocations can make the VM "stutter" and give more
latency due to having to do much much more work trying to defragment

The first 2 bits of the patch actually affect compiler options in a generic
way: I propose to disable the -funit-at-a-time feature from gcc. With this
enabled (and it's default with -O2), gcc will very agressively inline
functions, which is nice and all for userspace, but for the kernel this makes
us suffer a gcc deficiency more: gcc is extremely bad at sharing stackslots,
for example a situation like this:

if (some_condition)
function_A();
else
function_B();

with -funit-at-a-time, both function_A() and _B() might get inlined, however
the stack usage of both functions of the parent function grows the stack
usage of both functions COMBINED instead of the maximum of the two. Even
with the normal 8Kb stacks this is a danger since we see some functions grow
3Kb to 4Kb of stack use this way. With 4Kb stacks, 4Kb of stack usage growth
obviously is deadly ;-( but even with 8Kb stacks it's pure lottery.
Disabling -funit-at-a-time also exposes another thing in the -mm tree; the
attribute always_inline is considered harmful by gcc folks in that when gcc
makes a decision to NOT inline a function marked this way, it throws an
error. Disabling -funit-at-a-time disables some of the agressive inlining
(eg of large functions that come later in the .c file) so this would make
your tree not compile.

The 4k stackness of the kernel is included in modversions, so people don't
load 4k-stack modules into 8k-stack kernels.

At present 4k stacks are selectable in config. When the feature has settled
in we should remove the 8k option. This will break the nvidia modules. But
Fedora uses 4k stacks so a new nvidia driver is expected soon.



I ran yum install kernel and it worked liked a champ. For the most part, fedora released rpm's aren't going to require any mods to install and work properly. Most of the time!

Good Luck

Ok first off, as far as I know, the 2.6.6 kernel still uses 4kstacks, so no it won't support an Nvidia graphics card. Now, to install the new kernel, you simply type yum upgrade and it will install the new kernel along with all other packages that have upgrades available.

If you still want to used your Nvidia card, there is an 8kstacks version of kernel 2.6.6 at this website: http://www.linuxant.com/driverloader/wlan/full/downloads-fc2-kernel-i686.php

Simply go to that website, download the 2.6.6 kernel, and that will save it on your harddrive as either a zip or a tarball. Extract it and it will give you an RPM. Then, just install the RPM and it will take care of everything for you. Next, reboot your computer to the new kernel (there will even be a listing in grub for it) and follow the usual instructions for installing the Nvidia drivers. I'm using that kernel in FC2 right now, and have installed the Nvidia drivers as well. Everything works great! Good luck!

Do not use the updated kernel through yum or up2date. It still defautls to 4kstacks and you can't use the nVidia drivers with it.