[OpenAFS] Building openafs 1.6.15 on old ("precise") kernels

John Tang Boyland boyland@uwm.edu
Thu, 05 Nov 2015 20:57:10 -0600


Dear OpenAFS,

   We're trying to update our "precise" ubuntu systems with
openafs-1.6.15.  The standard distributions don't have recent
Openafs (esp. 1.6.15) and the launchpad PPA apparently doesn't
work with this old kernel (something about C library, I think).  
(It works for "trusty" but not "precise")

   I tried to build from source (./configure --with-linux-kernel-packaging)
with simple "make; make install".  The new kernel module
was placed in /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-amd64/extra/openafs/openafs.ko
leaving the old kernel module in /lib/2.6.32-5-amd64/fs/openafs.ko.
Barging ahead, I unwisely moved the new kernel module into the place
where the old kernel was, and restarted openafs-client.  The kernel
seg-faulted badly with very little information:
...
Message from syslogd@lager at Nov  5 20:07:10 ...
 kernel:[1161607.941495] invalid opcode: 0000 [#1] SMP 

Message from syslogd@lager at Nov  5 20:07:10 ...
 kernel:[1161607.941499] last sysfs file:
 /sys/devices/virtual/bdi/afs/uevent
...
The machine was unresponsive and had to be rebooted
in single-user mode and the module removed.
 
So it seems that:
(1) The directions to just "make install" doesn't work,
and 
(2) I built the new kernel module wrong.  "make" doesn't do the job.

Are there some instructions I should be following rather than
http://wiki.openafs.org/HowToBuildOpenAFSFromSource/ ?

Best regards,
John