[PATCH, revised] kernel versioning stuff

[Yann E. MORIN]

On Friday 19 May 2006 000, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
> what do you mean by the full "revision" string?  we're back to
> terminology again -- do you mean the "release" value, such as "2.6.16"
> or what?

Yep terminology... Sorry.

I'll try to be a little bit more explicit (does good to me as well):
 - when building the linux kernel, a 'release' string is generated with:
    $(VERSION).$(PATCHLEVEL).$(SUBLEVEL)$(EXTRAVERSION)$(localver_full)
   where localver_full is (more or less) one of:
    $(CONFIG_LOCALVERSION)  or a generated string if CONFIG_LOCALVERSION_AUTO is set

   For my linux 2.6.16.16 kernel, with CONFIG_LOCALVERSION_AUTO unset, and
   CONFIG_LOCALVERSION set to -nslu2, the 'release' string is:
     2.6.16.16-nslu2

 - this string is used to create a directory into which the modules are to be
   installed. What also lies in this directory is the files created by depmod,
   such as the modules.dep and modules.alias file which modprobe uses.

 - this 'release' string is available in the utsname structure as the field
   named 'release' (the utsname structure is filled by a call to uname(2)).

So yes, modprobe meeds the 'release' string. Sorry for the confusion.

Regards,
Yann E. MORIN.

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