Checking hardware compatibility

When upgrading to Linux kernel 5.x, Virtuozzo Hybrid Infrastructure will automatically check your hardware for compatibility with the new kernel. You can also perform this check manually, to ensure that hardware you are using is supported in the next major release. To do this, you can use the check-hw-compat.py script. The script detects unmaintained and removed hardware on a node:

  • Unmaintained hardware includes devices (drivers and adapters) that are no longer being tested and updated in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9, and thus should no longer be used in production.
  • Removed hardware means that its support has been discontinued, and such devices (drivers and adapters) are no longer available in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.

For more details on unmaintained and removed hardware, refer to Hardware enablement in "Considerations in adopting RHEL 9".

The script also uses the kmod indexes located in /usr/libexec/vstorage-ui-agent/var/kmod-idx/<target-version>, to check if devices have drivers in the new kernel version.

To check your hardware compatibility

Use the following script on each node of your cluster:

# /usr/libexec/vstorage-ui-agent/bin/check-hw-compat.py [-t <version>] [-e] [-R] [--skip-kmod]
-t <version>, --target-version <version>
Assume upgrading the OS to the specified version (default: 9)
-e, --show-entries
Show entries from the deprecation database (default: false)
-R, --hide-reason
Hide the reason why the device is not compatible (default: false)
--skip-kmod
Skip the check for unavailable modules in the new kernel version

For example:

# /usr/libexec/vstorage-ui-agent/bin/check-hw-compat.py
device unavailable  0000:00:07.0 NEC Corporation uPD720200 USB 3.0 Host Controller
    Device with ID 0x1033:0x0194:0x1af4 is unavailable
module unavailable  sunrpc

If the output is empty, this means the node hardware is fully supported. If the output shows unsupported devices, this hardware is unmaintained in the next major release and should not be used in production. Unavailable devices in the output indicate that this hardware is removed in the next major release and should be replaced before an upgrade.

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