[DRBD-user] DRBD requires a Xen kernel?

Lars Ellenberg lars.ellenberg at linbit.com
Tue Mar 30 07:46:01 CEST 2010

Note: "permalinks" may not be as permanent as we would like,
direct links of old sources may well be a few messages off.


On Mon, Mar 29, 2010 at 11:17:19PM -0600, Alan Robertson wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> This is probably a FAQ, but I just installed a DRBD package, and it
> installed a Xen kernel for/to me.  This seems a bit unnecessary, and
> arguably unfriendly...

What did it do?
Install a kernel?
Certainly not.

> What did I miss?
> 
> Here's the RPM info:
> $ rpm -q -i drbd
> Name        : drbd                         Relocations: (not relocatable)
> Version     : 8.3.6                             Vendor: (none)

You should be using 8.3.7.
We had a package split, 8.3.5 is the last "monolithic" userland,
8.3.6 had minor packaging glitches, and 8.3.7 got the packaging "right".

Previous drbd userland was monolithic,
and to conform to fedora packaging guidelines
we split this into several.

To ease upgrading, the "drbd" package now is a virtual package,
depending ("Requires:") on all parts formerly part of the monolithic
package.

One of those is named drbd-xen, and provides the Xen block device
management script for DRBD.
Again, according to packaging guidelines, this has to
 "Requires: xen" (at least on fedora).

This is how it pulls in a lot of xen dependencies,
probably also a kernel ;-)

Which is why we relaxed these Requires for RHEL packages
on the way to 8.3.7.

> Release     : 1.el5                         Build Date: Tue 08 Dec
> 2009 08:43:15 AM GMT
> Install Date: Tue 30 Mar 2010 05:07:29 AM GMT      Build Host: localhost
> Group       : System Environment/Kernel     Source RPM:
> drbd-8.3.6-1.el5.src.rpm
> Size        : 45901                            License: GPLv2+
> Signature   : (none)
> URL         : http://www.drbd.org/
> Summary     : DRBD driver for Linux
> Description :
> DRBD mirrors a block device over the network to another machine.
> Think of it as networked raid 1. It is a building block for
> setting up high availability (HA) clusters.
> 
> This is a virtual package, installing the full DRBD userland suite.

Sic.

Solution: install those packages you actually need,
not "the full DRBD userland suite" (with strict dependencies
according to packaging guidelines).

-- 
: Lars Ellenberg
: LINBIT | Your Way to High Availability
: DRBD/HA support and consulting http://www.linbit.com

DRBD® and LINBIT® are registered trademarks of LINBIT, Austria.
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