The skilful handiwork of merging bits from different kernels into one, and keeping it secure at the same time
event covered some of the inherent contradictions in keeping an enterprise distro's kernel on its feet. Or at least on somebody – or something's – feet, as its title hinted:"CentOS Frankenkernel: Append Your Limb."
He focused on the kernel of CentOS Stream, which in time will be the kernel of the next point-release of RHEL 9 – at the time of writing, that will be RHEL 9.3, but like the other versions of RHEL 9, this will have kernel 5.14 – released way back on August 29 2021. How do they achieve this? The goals of any kernel update are simple: stability, obviously. No regressions, and that also means no performance regressions. No API changes, and no internal ABI changes either: in fact, no changes in behaviour. But, at the same time, customers want new features, and support for new hardware, including new drivers; they want updates, at a minimum any outstanding security updates. All without breaking whatever they are currently using, because that's what they are paying for.
This is a big ask, and the result must inevitably be a compromise. The team tries to deliver no functional regressions, and to limit performance regressions to the important stuff. To make no backwards-incompatible microAPI changes, and to avoid kernel ABI changes for important stuff. The problem is that people want new features… and new or updated drivers.
So, what the team are working on is a Frankenstein's monster, sewn together from different codebases. Although the base kernel is still version 5.14, it is full of backports from upstream. It has the XFS filesystem code from kernel 6.0, the USB subsystem – complete with drivers – and BPF subsystem from kernel 6.2, the wireless stack and all drivers from kernel 6.3, and the multipath TCP/IP code from kernel 6.4 – which at the time of the talk hadn't even been released upstream yet.
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