RedHat ES and AS kernels

[Sam Flory]

Stephen Anderson wrote:
> Due to constraints, I manually download RedHat network updates and load
> via a CD. up2date/yum or any autoupdater via RHN is out of the question.
>  
> When downloading the kernel rpms from the RedHat network web pages, I
> can not find a difference in the naming or size of the ES and AS kernels
> for RHEL 4. Specifically the 2.6.9-55 smp kernels. I weed through the
> multitude of earlier RedHat versions to finally locate the smp kernels
> for AS, so maybe I am missing a better way to manually browse the
> updates. I wish I could go to a web page that would offer the latest
> updates for a particular RedHat version AND be able to filter on the
> errata for that version/update only.


  Why bother they all have the same source code base.  The only
difference is exactly which packages are provided.  A given package in
ES is the exact same package in AS.

> So I am left wondering what is the "best" kernel for ES (< 4 CPUs and <
> 8GB MEM) and AS ( > 4 CPUs and > 16 GB MEM).

  Last time I checked they both use the same kernel for smp systems, and
systems over 4G of memory.  I'm pretty sure that the hugemem kernel is
the one that supports >4G.

> So if anyone has mastered the RHEL kernel topic:
>  
> 1. What are the available kernels for RHEL 4 Advanced Server? (e.g. smp)

single proc kernels for i585, and i686
smp kernels for i585, and i686
hugemem kernel

> 2. Are the kernels for RHEL 4 Enterprise Server and Advanced Server
> named different?

Not last I checked.  I've run a 8 proc 32G system with ES years ago.
All that happened was a message a boot saying this wasn't supported.

> 3. Are there hugemem and largesmp kernels, and if so, which RHEL
> version/architecture are those for?

  There should be a hugemem kernel which I believe are required for more
than 4G of memory.  Looking at the smp vs hugemem kernel configs both
should support the same number of cpus.  (Of course past 8 cpu you'll
really require more memory be able to make use of more cpus.)