I got a patch from a mirror site of kernel.org and tried to apply it but i got this error saying something like the patch was "reversed" and it asked if I wanted to apply -R

I tried to say yes but it just failed so i restored my src tree from a backup i made prior to doing the patch.

Any ideas what the problem is? I checked the patch's gpg signature and all that before i tried to apply it and i consulted many HOWTOs etc following the directions to apply a patch. Could it be something wrong with the patch? do i need a redhat specific patch to update a redhat system? i'm stumped.

The exact mesage i get is " Reversed (or previously applied) patch detected! Assume -R? [n]"

i tried yes and no to that question but neither one worked. is this a superficial error or will it prevent me from compiling my kernel? and why is it coming up?

Most kernel.org patches expect to be applied to "vanilla" sources, or in other words a pristine kernel tree as downloaded from kernel.org. Most distributions patch their kernels more or less heavily, so it is possible that if you use such a source tree the patch (or another one doing the same thing, like patch sets) might already have been applied.


Håkan

i haven't done any kernel updates since i first installed redhat 9 on my computer - the kernel is 2.4.20 and i'm upgrading to 2.4.21 (the patch i obtained from kernel.org).

Are you saying that this patch can't be applied to my src tree? or just that it's looking for files to update that it can't find? is this a problem? can i just ignore the errors and move on? or can i get a redhat specific patch to 2.4.21 from somewhere that will be compatible?

thanks,

If you are using the kernel source package from your Redhat distribution (as opposed to a tarball downloaded from a kernel.org mirror) then no - you cannot use the patch. Like I said, the patch only applies to a non-patched kernel source tree while Redhat patches their kernels quite heavily.


Håkan