Dicussion on RedHat and Virtual Connect issue?

[chuckk281]

Charles asked a Linux driver question:

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Anyone know about a possible Link up/down issue with redhat?

It appears that Redhat 5.6 and below do not correctly detect link state changes on HP VirtualConnect.

The customer is hearing rumors that speak to some change that HP made and a fix available in Redhat 5.7.

This issue has a severe impact on their ability to upgrade VirtualConnect with Linux running on it.  They would be interested in knowing what if anything can be done to resolve this prior to upgrading to Redhat 5.7.

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The conversation:

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From Alan:

We sure apply HP NIC driver instead of Redhat bundle driver. The HP driver support both Redhat 5.6 and 5.7, so if there is problem, it will not affect 5.6 only.

Reply from Charles:

Doesn’t the HP NIC driver change the kernel though?  if so, then there’s the issue about RedHat support with a “tainted” kernel. Most of my customers hesitate to use our NIC drivers because of this (or at least that’s what they tell me).

does that issue still exist, or do our NIC drivers no longer change the kernel?

From Chris:

No.  Why would you think that?  Our drivers have been compiled against specific versions of the kernel, which may require the customer to use a supported stream, and not some custom kernel they got from kernel.org.

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Any other input or questions?