[gpfsug-discuss] kernel updates and GPFS modules: manual, DKMS, cron, other?

[David Magda]

Hello,

I am a new user of GPFS (Spectrum Scale) and would like to know if there is a ‘best practice’ on handling kernel updates on HPC clients. We are running Ubuntu 18.04 and 20.04 clients with 5.1.x, talking to RHEL storage servers, and would like to know how to handle re-compiling the client-side kernel modules.

There is of course the “mmbuildgpl” utility:

	https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/spectrum-scale/5.1.3?topic=reference-mmbuildgpl-command

but how do folks invoke it? Manually, via cron at night on or reboot, via some kind of apt (dpkg-trigger(1)) / RPM hook?

We have the “unattended-upgrades” package enabled, which only installs security-tagged updates by default, but sometimes this does include kernel updates, which may become active on the next reboot:

	https://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=unattended-upgrades

So is there a best practice? Has someone invented this wheel that I could leverage, or will I have to invent it myself?

Thanks for any info.

-- 
David Magda