CentOS 4.9 ( 2.6.9 )

[Team]

Hi,
I need to install the CentOS 4.9 on the system with the SATA hard disk; the problem is that the this release don't support the Intel B75 chipset SERIAL ATA controller ( Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family 6-port Sata Controller (AHCI) rev. 4 ) so not installing; I tried to install the CentOS 5.11 ( 2.6.18 ) and the installation is successful. I have found that both releases have the SATA module ( ahci.ko - libata.ko - ata-piix-ko ) loaded but the modules of the CentOS 5.11 are greater in size than those of 4.9 release. Moreover I loaded the modules of 5.11 into 4.9 release using "insmod -f <module.ko>" comand without success. Can I do?? I need to install absolutely the release 4.9 on the system with SATA disk.

Thanks in advance for your support,

Frank

[TrevorH]

CentOS 4 is end of life and unsupported and has been for more than 2 and a half years. You should not be installing that on anything. It has unfixed security vulnerabilities.

Why do you think you need 4.9?

[Team]

I need to install the 4.9 release because I have the others custom drivers for this version. Why I can't to install the SATA modules of the 5.11 into 4.9 release?

[TrevorH]

Well most likely because 4.9 is positively ancient and new hardware comes out all the time and it's not supported on the older kernel. The iso images for 4.9 are dated Aug 2009 so they are slightly more than 5 years old. If your hardware is newer than 5 years old then there's a good chance that it won't be supported by the kernel on the install media.

You can't just pick up modules out of a newer kernel and reuse it on an older one because the ABI is not compatible between the two and it will refuse to load.

What custom drivers do you have and have they made it into the mainline kernel in the meantime?

As I said previously, you should not be using 4.x now let alone deploying new installs of it. If you read the Redhat errata page for CentOS 5 and look at all the security updates that have been released since February 2012 then you can see the potential vulnerabilities that might exist in 4.9.

If you really have no choice then Redhat will quite happily sell you an extended lifespan license for RHEL4 but I am unsure if that goes as far as supporting new installs onto unsupported hardware.

[Team]

Thanks for your support!!
How I can to re-make my custom drivers (Jungo) for the newer CentOS release??

[TrevorH]

A quick google on "jungo linux" turned up this though I am unsure how complicated that is in real life to implement. A later link was to http://www.jungo.com/st/support/documen ... tall_linux

[Team]

Thanks,
now I study the better solution at my problem, so maybe we'll talk soon.
Bye

[TrevorH]

You might want to think ahead and go straight for CentOS 6 (or even 7) bearing the thought in mind that CentOS 5 only has 2.5 years of life left where 6 has 6 years and 7 has nearly 10.