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I have set up a VM on Windows Azure (Openlogic CentOS 6.3 - of one predefined images).

The problem is I see no kernel-headers package and it can't be installed (yum doesn't fine it). Thus, anything relying upon it can't be installed as well.

Is is a known issue for the above type of Azure VM?

Thanks.

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4 Answers 4

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The OpenLogic representative confirmed that in such cases something like this should be run, to force installing certain packages:

sudo yum --disableexcludes=main install kernel-headers-2.6.32-279.14.1.el6.openlogic.x86_64

I hope that could help other people that will find standard packages 'missing' (actually, prevented from being installed by specific repo/yum settings).

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The kernel-header packages, along with all the SRPMS are provided in an OpenLogic repository, named ‘openlogic’ which is provided with the CentOS 6.3 gallery image.

They can be installed via this command:

$ sudo yum --disableexcludes=main install kernel-headers-2.6.32-279.14.1.el6.openlogic.x86_64

From a release standpoint, CentOS 6.3 lives downstream from RHEL 6.3, so updates follow that general path. In kernel 2.6.32-279, an ata_piix driver bug was discovered that prevented some functionality with Hyper-V and Windows Azure. This bug was patched upstream and released in later kernel streams. However, these newer kernels were only available in the RHEL 6.4 to CentOS 6.4 kernel stream. OpenLogic took the patches that had been ported to work with kernel 2.6.32-279 and manually applied them to the kernel.

OpenLogic has no intentions in excluding, or preventing any package from being used or installed. The ‘exclude=kernel-*’ parameter that is set in the yum configuration is only meant as a temporary fix to reduce the risk of an end user unknowingly updating past the provided patched kernel and thus reintroducing the known ata_piix driver issue. Doing so can result in a non-functional Windows Azure instance.

As soon as the fixed drivers finally filter down to the main repositories, OpenLogic will remove the kernel exclusions.

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In Windows Azure OS Image Gallery, the CentOS image does not include kernel header package. If you must need kernel header package, your best bet is to create your own CentOS image VHD locally, install everything you needed and then deploy to Azure. Once VHD is deployed create a Azure VM from the VHD which will fulfill your need.

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    It grieves me to say that without kernel headers, no actual development tool set can be installed under such an image, which makes it pretty useless. I expected an answer different from 'install your own image' - the last thing I expect from a default gallery image is it's being unable to be used for compiling whatever I need.
    – Konstantin Boyandin
    Jan 3, 2013 at 1:27
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What you can try to do is install the relevant kernel-headers-VERSION.el6.x86_64.rpm package from another trusted CentOS repository source.

For example by looking up the needed RPM package up in http://rpm.pbone.net/ , and downloading and installing it from there using rpm -ivh http://path.to.repo/kernel-headers-VERSION.el6.x86_64.rpm

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  • I don't think that mixing repositories is a good idea, since they do not always get updated in sync. But yes, that's a workaround as well.
    – Konstantin Boyandin
    Mar 13, 2013 at 15:52

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