So I have a third-party kernel module which wants to check what kernel version it's building against, and it fails to build under -rc6-mmotm0506 (it works just fine under -rc5-mmotm0429). I finally isolated it down to a two-liner section of code, which seems to die because somebody didn't include something that rcupdate.h wanted to see: cat > /tmp/kernconf.c < #include EOF + cat # This builds fine kern="2.6.39-rc5-mmotm0429" + kern=2.6.39-rc5-mmotm0429 cc -D__KERNEL__ -nostdinc -isystem /usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-redhat-linux/4.6.0/include -I/lib/modules/${kern}/build/include -include /lib/modules/${kern}/build/include/generated/autoconf.h -I/lib/modules/${kern}/build/arch/x86/include -c /tmp/kernconf.c + cc -D__KERNEL__ -nostdinc -isystem /usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-redhat-linux/4.6.0/include -I/lib/modules/2.6.39-rc5-mmotm0429/build/include -include /lib/modules/2.6.39-rc5-mmotm0429/build/include/generated/autoconf.h -I/lib/modules/2.6.39-rc5-mmotm0429/build/arch/x86/include -c /tmp/kernconf.c # this one dies kern="2.6.39-rc6-mmotm0506" + kern=2.6.39-rc6-mmotm0506 cc -D__KERNEL__ -nostdinc -isystem /usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-redhat-linux/4.6.0/include -I/lib/modules/${kern}/build/include -include /lib/modules/${kern}/build/include/generated/autoconf.h -I/lib/modules/${kern}/build/arch/x86/include -c /tmp/kernconf.c + cc -D__KERNEL__ -nostdinc -isystem /usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-redhat-linux/4.6.0/include -I/lib/modules/2.6.39-rc6-mmotm0506/build/include -include /lib/modules/2.6.39-rc6-mmotm0506/build/include/generated/autoconf.h -I/lib/modules/2.6.39-rc6-mmotm0506/build/arch/x86/include -c /tmp/kernconf.c In file included from /lib/modules/2.6.39-rc6-mmotm0506/build/include/linux/sem.h:81:0, from /lib/modules/2.6.39-rc6-mmotm0506/build/include/linux/sched.h:72, from /lib/modules/2.6.39-rc6-mmotm0506/build/include/linux/utsname.h:35, from /tmp/kernconf.c:2: /lib/modules/2.6.39-rc6-mmotm0506/build/include/linux/rcupdate.h: In function '__kfree_rcu': /lib/modules/2.6.39-rc6-mmotm0506/build/include/linux/rcupdate.h:822:2: error: size of unnamed array is negative rm /tmp/kernconf.c + rm /tmp/kernconf.c 'git blame include/linux/rcudate.h' points at this commit: commit 896d4eb94e0b7cd896ee92c380fadc1e9d867cfc Author: Lai Jiangshan Date: Fri Mar 18 11:15:47 2011 +0800 rcu: introduce kfree_rcu()