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I have built an RPM on RHEL7 ppc64le and it got the suffix "el7a" as opposed to "el7" which I expected. Why is that and what does the "a" stand for?

mstud
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2 Answers2

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You get el7, fc29 and other values from %{?dist} variable defined in the rpm spec file. %{?dist} values are generated from /etc/rpm/macros.dist file.

atype
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  • Some useful documentation on the Fedora wiki regarding how this is used. No mention of el7a as a known dust tag though. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:DistTag – Cameron Kerr Nov 23 '18 at 22:17
  • It probably stands for processor arch or smth. like that. – atype Nov 24 '18 at 07:41
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For less-mainstream architectures, Red Hat have an Alternate series kernel, which is closer to current mainstream (more love and attention from upstream, less effort to backport)

Eg. Kernel 3.10 in kernel package, versus 4.14 in kernel-alt

While it doesn’t specifically mention el7a as a dist tag, you may like to read this as relates to supported architectures.

https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/7/html/7.5_release_notes/chap-red_hat_enterprise_linux-7.5_release_notes-architectures

Cameron Kerr
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