Rebuilding A CentOS 6.2 Netinstall Initrd With An Updated Driver?

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Hi all,

It seems that with the release of the X99 motherboards, a lot of vendors are shifting away from using Realtek ethernet on board NICs and using Intel. Our main distro. on the floor is CentOS 6.2 for numerous reasons. Efforts are being made toward 7.1, but not there yet.

Anyway, the new Intel NICs are recognised by CentOS 6.6 netinstall ISO when booting, but not CentOS 6.2. I have had the idea of unpacking the initrd and using the e1000/e1000e drivers from 6.6, and updating the 6.2 initrd. This has not worked so far, but I’m hoping I’ve missed a step.

I have:
1) unpacked both initrd’s
2) updated modules.* from the 6.2 initrd to match 6.6 for the relevant modules/dependent modules
3) updated the pci.ids file
4) chrooted, run `depmod -a -v`
5) rebuilt the initrd

6.2 still fails to see the NIC. Is there a step I’ve missed here? Do I have to concern myself with the kernel(vmlinuz) file too?

3 thoughts on - Rebuilding A CentOS 6.2 Netinstall Initrd With An Updated Driver?

  • Hi, Rory,

    You need to be on 6.7, not 6.2. There are more security and bug fixes in 6.7 over 6.2 than just a NIC driver enhancement. There are probably very few reasons to stay at 6.2 versus 6.7, and many more reasons to update to 6.7 posthaste.

    Yes, you need the newer kernel, and you may need other pieces of 6.7 as well for the newer kernel to even work.

    CentOS does not and never has supported staying at a particular point release. If you need this functionality, CentOS is not the right distribution for you; try Scientific Linux, which is built from the same sources and does feature a certain amount of support for being able to pin at a particular point release.

  • Thanks for the thoughts. I will not be updating to CentOS 6.7 across 200
    workstations when CentOS 7 is close on the horizon. I’ve had to use CentOS
    6.6 for two other non-standard machines in the last few months which is why I was talking of using it again here. I’d rather not have three CentOS
    distributions on the floor, two is enough.

    Thanks for confirming what else I would need to do what I want to achieve. It looks like I will go with CentOS 6.6 (or 6.7, if I have to..) for the workstations that *need* it due to the driver issue, and go from there.

  • There is no 6.7 only 6 and that *really* is the way you should look at it.
    6.6 -> 6.7 was a decidedly pain free experience for me. Early point releases tend to be more significant.

    jh