Need to patch NIC driver on Centos 7.1 installation media

[meepmeep24]

I need to replace ixgbe.ko on CentOS 7.1 Installation media so that the installation media recognized my NIC. It cannot be loaded after. I think I know what I need to do in order to patch the ixgbe.ko kernel module into the CentOS 7.1 installation media. I want to uncompress initrd.img located in the root directory of CentOS media, overwrite the existing ixgbe.ko file in the initrd.img with the new ixgbe.ko, recompress initrd.img, and copy the new initrd.img back to the installation media and boot. I uncompress the initrd.img from by "Ubuntu" host with:
# xz -dc < initrd.img | cpio --quiet -i –make-directories

I have tried different commands with xz and cpio to recompress the uncompressed files back into a new initrd.img but the resulting initrd.img file seems to double in size and when I try to boot from the new media I get some errors that prevent the boot media from going into installation GUI.
Right now I am uncompressing the initrd.img file with the command above. Then I just want to recompress it right away (without patching) to see if I can boot my new initrd.img file but I get some strange errors on boot up.

Can someone give me the proper command to recompress the initrd.img files back into an initrd.img file?

Regards,
Todd

[TrevorH]

7.1 is years out of date and has multiple high severity security vulnerabilties. It should not be used. Current is 7.4 and most likely already has a newer ixgbe module.

[meepmeep24]

Thank you. Understood. Our customer is going to port their software but right now they need to test with 7.1 and need this driver incorporated into the boot media. I believe it needs to be patched into initrd.img and I am looking for the command to recompress initrd.img after I uncompress it and patch it.

[TrevorH]

Can you not use kmod-ixgbe.x86_64 from ELRepo and set up a driver disk containing that and feed it to the installer using the dd parameter?

[meepmeep24]

I have a specific Intel ixgbe.ko kernel module that I built for the Intel C3000 processor's integrated NICs. I want to use this exact one. I see there is an older ixgbe.ko file in initrd.ko under /lib/modules/..... (same kernel version as I built) on my installation media and I just want to patch the file with my new kernel module. I have successfully uncompressed initrd.img from the CentOS installation media but I am not sure the correct command to re-compress the directory and make a new initrd.img. That is what I need help with. We then will copy the new initrd.img file over the bootable USB stick that was originally created from the CentOS 7.1 ISO using the Rufus utility. Can you help us with this command to recompress the expanded directory from initrd.img?

[TrevorH]

Then build your specific version into an rpm and put that on a driver disk.