[yocto] Updating NIC drivers in older Yocto

[Dave Mulder]

> I have been using a Sandy Bridge Yocto 1.3 build for a couple years now, on off-
> the-shelf Intel PC motherboards. I also build an application.
> 
> I am now looking into using more recent motherboards. The OS boots just fine,
> but the new NICs (Intel, Realtek) are not supported by the old 3.4.11 kernel.
> 
> What's the best way to support new NICs?  I can see three options:
> 
> 
> 1.       New Yocto.  I suspect (but would be happy to be wrong) that my
> application would need to be built against a different sysroot/toolchain, which
> seems like it would cause backward-compatibility problems (can't run new
> application on old OS), and I would prefer to not have multiple builds of the
> application and have to have the host software determine which version is
> needed (it's an embedded application, and the OS is headless).

I was wrong (happily): My application (built with the 1.3 toolchain) works with Yocto 1.8.
I did keep the same BSP (sugarbay), which may be the key.
 
> 2.       New kernel, old Yocto.  I don't know that this is actually an option, or how
> new of a kernel can be used in Yocto 1.3.  If this is an option, it seems like my
> application would not need to be rebuilt.
> 
> 3.       Loadable drivers for new NICs (rather than using the ones built into the
> kernel).  I don't know that this is doable either.
> 
> Are there other options?  Can a new application be built that will work with
> multiple versions of the OS?  Is that even a problem, or am I just assuming the
> worst?
> 
> Thanks!
> Dave