[mythtv] [announce] DKMS-ified myth kernel modules

Gary Lerhaupt gary at lerhaupt.com
Sun Apr 11 23:28:57 EDT 2004


I'm not sure how many on the dev list use the kmdl RPMs for things like
ivtv rather than building just from source, but you might be interested
in this regardless.  For grins I threw together a DKMS-enabled version
of ivtv
(http://www.lerhaupt.com/mythtv/permalink/ivtv-0.1.9-25dkms.noarch.rpm).  Rather than split the user base between those that compile from source and those that install pre-compiled RPMs, why not merge the two and make life easier for everyone?

If you're not familiar with DKMS, this recently released paper is a good
overview: http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/power/1q04-ler.pdf.  The
gist is that the RPM installs the source into /usr/src/ivtv-version and
then calls DKMS to do all the dirty work of compiling and recompiling
the kernel modules regardless of kernel.  As well, there's an
autoinstaller service which automatically builds and compiles modules as
you boot into new kernels.  It's all very simple.  

A couple notes.  The RPM I put together installs both the ivtv utilities
and the kernel module.  These might be better off as mutually exclusive
packages but for now I'll just leave it all in one.  Before installing
it, you'll probably want to rpm -e ivtv...rpm and ivtv-kmdl....rpm. 
Also, I've noticed it does not successfully compile on some kernels so
I'll need to work this out.  One of the great things about dkms is that
you can include various patches which get applied to the module source
depending on the kernel version the module is being built for.

Anyway, give it a rip and let me know what you think.  If people see
value in this, I'll convert the other kmdl RPMs to make use of dkms. 
Also, I wrote a blog entry describing my work:
http://www.lerhaupt.com/foo/archives/000176.html.  I'll likely cross
post this on the users list since I could see many people finding this
convenient (and help everybody not get stuck on a kernel waiting for
updated modules).  Certainly I think this should help with the
bureaucracy of managing upgrades both from the users and developers
perspective.  Thanks everyone for all your great work.

Gary



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