Ok, I just installed FC4. I do a uname -rm while in the console and I get the following as my installed kernel:

2.6.11-1.1369_FC4 i686

But, when I do a yum install kernel-devel it installs the following kernel source:

2.6.14-1.1637_FC4-i686

How do I get the correct kernel source installed? I need it to get the Nvidia driver installed.

It would be a better idea to update the kernel and then boot the new kernel before you mess with installing the kernel-devel package.

yum update kernel*
(or yum update)
reboot
yum install kernel-devel

"2.6.11-1.1369_FC4 i686" is the version shipped on the CD's. You can look on your CD's or DVD rom. This is included on the FC4 CD #4.

I would recommend extra caution when updating kernels.

(note) make sure to uninstall the current before getting from CD or DVD:
rpm -e kernel-devel

when you run the yum install accorfing to youm.conf, yum will install the latest version, if need the old version you should get the packaga and install with rpm -ivh.

I just did a yum update kernel, rebooted and then installed the kernel-devel. I was then able to install the Nvidia driver. So...Thanks for the info it fixed my problem.

would I be correct in assuming "kernel-devel" are the kernel sources?
I ask because I had a nightmare of a time trying to install a kernel SRPM to build ndiswrapper against. I grabbed it from the RedHat updates repository and it was missing include files ffs

No you would not be correct. They are the kernel HEADERS. The kernel source must be installed separately through an SRC.RPM.

The headers don't come with the sources? what the hell kind of a system is that?!?

Of course they do. How did you conclude the above statement?

The kernel-devel package is a smaller package which includes the kernel headers so one does not require the entire kernel source package to recompile certain drivers.

To clarify: there is no specific RPM with the kernel sources. There is only a source RPM (src.rpm) for this purpose. Previously RH would package a RPM called "kernel-source" which included the kernel source. This has been discontinued.

The point of my comment was to state that the kernel-devel RPM does NOT include the kernel source.

Hi,

I know this is an old post but I thought I would add some information.

I took what I needed off of the dvd I got with the Fedora Core 5 - REL4 Bible book i bought. I also could have gotten the header I needed from a mirror like: http://ftp.linux.ncsu.edu/pub/fedora/linux/core/

I then created a directory to contain just the rpm and output from processing the rpm.

In my case I needed the rpm for the smp 686 version of "2054" for an setting up vmware 6.0 beta workstation on a Fedore Core 5 install. I used the uname -r command to figure out what version I needed. By the way inside the vm on VMWARE I needed the non smp version of header files.

kernel-smp-devel-2.6.15-1.2054_FC5.i686.rpm was what I needed.

I then did a cd to the directory I put the rpm in and did:

rpm2cpio kernel-smp-devel-2.6.15-1.2054_FC5.i686.rpm | cpio - ivd

This created over 5000 files in the directory I created. I then copied the 2 .../usr/src/kernels/2.6.15-1.
2054* directories to /usr/src/kernels directory.

I had already updated my main system to the 2257 kernel but I was having a slow boot startup problem with my Dell 8300 using the latter kernel. I am still mainly using the old 2054 kernel for now. The update on my system from 2057 to 2257 took about 10 hours to download and process with all of the software I had installed. I am using a slow cable modem config - about 1/3 mb.

The yum install kernel-smp-devel and rpm -ivv ... commands would not work directly with the higher level of the kernel installed.

Karl