Re-adding support for older hardware

General Discussion & Chat
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Later today we’ll be announcing the beta for AlmaLinux 9.4. This release also includes support for older PCI IDs that were deprecated and removed upstream. (edit to add a link to the AlmaLinux 9.4 announcement blog post).

  • The following device drivers were modified to re-add PCI IDs for hardware disabled in upstream:
    • aacraid - Dell PERC2, 2/Si, 3/Si, 3/Di, Adaptec Advanced Raid Products, HP NetRAID-4M, IBM ServeRAID & ICP SCSI
    • be2iscsi - Emulex OneConnectOpen-iSCSI for BladeEngine 2 and 3 adapters
    • hpsa - HP Smart Array Controller
    • lpfc - Emulex LightPulse Fibre Channel SCSI
    • megaraid_sas - Broadcom MegaRAID SAS
    • mpt3sas - LSI MPT Fusion SAS 3.0
    • mptsas - Fusion MPT SAS Host
    • qla2xxx - QLogic Fibre Channel HBA
    • qla4xxx - QLogic iSCSI HBA

The full list of the devices that will now be supported in AlmaLinux will be included in the release notes. We expect the production release of AlmaLinux OS 9.4 to follow the production release of RHEL 9.4 by about a week, and RHEL 9.4 is currently anticipated sometime in mid-May.

What we need to know from our community:

  1. Do you use elrepo.org modules?
  2. Which modules do you use for which hardware (including the PCI ID, if possible)?
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Even worse, I’m using kernel-lt from elrepo.org, as it’s the only way to properly support [14c3:7663] MT7663 (Wi-Fi/BT combo) on some Acer laptops. Although kernel 5.10 added mt7663e support to mt7615 driver, it just doesn’t work in 5.14, whereas in 6.1 it just works.

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My workplace has a (dwindling, but still being used) group of hosts from 2013 and 2014 which have pre-3 ConnectX cards (e.g. 15b3:673c) which I am supporting on AL9 using ELRepo’s kmod-mlx4, which enables CONFIG_MLX4_CORE_GEN2.

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Thanks @quartsize !
Enabled for AlmaLinux 8.10 beta kernel:

9.4 beta is released already so will enable on 9.4 stable.

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Sometimes, for newer CephFS kernel support.

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This is what I feared the most when RedHat pulled their stunt last year. Now the kernel differs from a genuine RHEL kernel which leaves those that have software that depends on kernel source code compatibility for third party software in a bind. In particular we use GPFS on our HPC system and you have to track the kernel versions closely. For example when RHEL 8.8 came out you needed a new version of GPFS to successfully compile the kernel module for GPFS.

Is there any thought going to be given to a RHEL compatible kernel in the same what that Oracle does with their UEL kernel and RedHat compatible kernel?

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Hey @jabuzzard! The kernel has actually differed since last year, as Red Hat doesn’t release their kernel updates publicly. This update presents no practical difference from RHEL, still, but to answer your question: compatibility is still our primary focus.

We will continue to track versions with Red Hat and continue to treat compatibility (not duplication) as our primary goal. We have a ton of HPC systems and companies that rely on us, in addition to the numerous other types of systems and the downstream distributions that are all impacted when we made decisions like this, and we won’t leave anyone stranded.

If there are specific concerns about HPC systems that you need addressed, I’d love to chat with you (via email or video, whatever is most convenient for you). There may be a way we can add to our tests as we go through our build processes, to help guarantee it works for you.

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