Bug 157554

I guess, we can recycle this report.  The following spnippet now is part of the update info chapter of the SLES Adminguide and I'd like to add something similar to the release notes:

Changes with Kernel Modules

The following kernel modules are no longer available:

  • km_fcdsl—AVM Fritz!Card DSL

  • km_fritzcapi—AVM FRITZ! ISDN Adapters

The following kernel module package was changed internally:

  • km_wlan—Various drivers for wireless LAN cards. The madwifi driver for
    Atheros WLAN cards from km_wlan was removed.

For technical reasons, it was necessary to drop support for Ralink WLAN cards.
The following modules were not part of the distribution and will not be added
in the future:

  • ati-fglrx—ATI FireGL Graphics Cards

  • nvidia-gfx—NVIDIA gfx driver

  • km_smartlink-softmodem—Smart Link Soft Modem

Find additional driver in the kpm packages. For background information, see
http://www.suse.de/~agruen/kernel-doc/.

Please remove this paragraph:

The following modules were not part of the distribution and will not be added
in the future:

  • ati-fglrx—ATI FireGL Graphics Cards

  • nvidia-gfx—NVIDIA gfx driver

  • km_smartlink-softmodem—Smart Link Soft Modem

Otherwise ok.

done. ->/work

Not yet okay. It makes no sense to tell users which km_ packages are no longer available; they want to know the module names (*.ko). To get from the km_ package name to the module list, please proceed as follows:

 - Check into which directories below /usr/src/kernel-modules the mentioned
   km_* rpms install their sources:
     rpm -qlp /work/CDs/all/full-10.0-i386/suse/i586/km_fcdsl.rpm

 - Check in the kernel build log which modules were installed from those
   directories (or from sub-directories): Search for the last directory
   component, and for INSTALL /somewhere/something.ko in
  /work/built/dists/all/10.0-i386/packs-i386/kernel-default/
    kernel-default-2.6.13/Logfile.kernel-default.spec

For wlan, please check which *.ko files from the ones listed in the old
build log are no longer available in the wlan-kmp-default.rpm package from
STABLE.

Note that madwifi-kmp-*.rpm will be on NLD; it contains some of the wlan modules that were previously part of km_wlan.

I don't know what "technical reasons" should mean; can't we come up with a more meaningful reason?

Please refer to http://en.opensuse.org/Kernel_Module_Packages, which explains what KMPs are.

Please don't refer to http://www.suse.de/~agruen/kernel-doc/: that's very technical, and 95% of all users would only get irritated.

Thanks.

Ok, makes sense.  Thanks for all the details!

Taking a closer look...  I remove the ~agruen reference and added the opensuse one.  The other details are to be provided by kernel or driver expert.  ATM, I do not have the time to dig through kernel sources and package contents files; it would take too much time for me to become familiar with these driver details.

No, I do not know the "technical details".

Matze/Andreas, please decide what we can do.

Then please at least also remove the misleading references to km_ whatever; customers don't know about those packages, and they most likely don't care.

The Ralink issue is explained in bug 149141: old driver no longer works with 2.6.16; new version not yet stable enough; will try to release an update as soon as the new version is stable enough.

OK, can we close this bug than?

I think so.  I'll adjust the text now.  Assigning to me again.

Andreas, I hope I got you right.  This is the version I will commit to the next release notes update:

Changes with Kernel Modules
===========================
The following kernel modules are no longer available:

  • AVM Fritz!Card DSL
  
  • AVM FRITZ! ISDN Adapters

The following kernel module package was changed internally:

  • Various drivers for wireless LAN cards. The madwifi driver for Atheros WLAN
    cards was removed.

   For technical reasons, it was necessary to drop support for Ralink
   WLAN cards. The old driver no longer works with kernel version 2.6.16 and
   the new version is not yet stable enough.  We intend to release an update as
   soon as the new version is stable enough.

Find additional drivers in the kpm packages. For background information, see
http://en.opensuse.org/Kernel_Module_Packages.

(In reply to comment #2)
> Please remove this paragraph:
> 
> The following modules were not part of the distribution and will not be added
> in the future:
> 
>   • ati-fglrx—ATI FireGL Graphics Cards
> 
>   • nvidia-gfx—NVIDIA gfx driver
> 
>   • km_smartlink-softmodem—Smart Link Soft Modem

ATI and NVidia drivers were not part of the distribution, but Smartlink WAS. There were two modules, slamr.ko and slusb.ko, which belonged to the 'kernel-default-nongpl' package. So if a mention is made to AVM modules removal, then why isn't there any mention to Smartlink modules? 

Bug 153112 is also related with this problem.

Andreas, Matze what do you think?  Shall I mention Smartlink modules along with AVM modules?

Yes, please also mention Smart Link Soft Modem. Thanks.

ok.  submitted to /work.