Re: RPM packages: Athlon vs i686 vs i386

If you use yum there is no need to specify processor, yum will choose the one that fits best. If you have athlon as i do then imho athlon rpms are prefered over i686 and i686 over i386, at least that's how yum is doing.

Don Dixon wrote:

This link explains it from a 2.6 perspective, but in the FC1 updates directory, there exists an kernel-2.4.22-1.2174.nptl.athlon.rpm and a kernel-2.4.22-1.2174.nptl.i686.rpm. So which should be applied (keeping in mind what I mentioned earlier)?

Don Dixon
fedora-list_me_no_like_spam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Christopher K. Johnson wrote:

Don Dixon wrote:

Greetings,

I recently submitted what I thought was a bug to bubzilla concerning CPU
detection and FC1.  The bugzilla number is 116941 if anyone is
interested in reading in detail.  The basic problem is that I have an
Athlon XP 1600+ CPU, yet when I boot to the CLI, it says:

Fedora Core release 1 (Yarrow)
Kernel 2.4.22-1.2174.nptl on an i686

This exact same hardware, until recently was running RH7.3 and it booted
to the CLI identifying itself as athlon.  That was the reason I thought
it was a bug.  On bugzilla, the report has been closed with:

"athlon is always a i686 for the kernel"

So, what I am now wondering about is updates. I need to know which level of RPM packages to
load. For instance with kernels, would I choose kernel-2.4.22-1.2174.nptl.athlon.rpm or
kernel-2.4.22-1.2174.nptl.i686.rpm? And with glibc, do I choose glibc-2.3.2-101.4.i686.rpm
or glibc-2.3.2-101.4.i386.rpm.

Any opinions would be greatly appreciated.

Don
fedora-list_me_no_like_spam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Not a problem.  See http://people.redhat.com/%7Earjanv/2.6/readme.txt
which includes this note:

"I no longer build athlon kernels because in theory the 2.6 kernel now has a
mechanism to automatically runtime patch in these optimisations during boot"

Chris