Comment 17 for bug 1715519

These Linux LPARs are running Novalink, in a mode that allows them to serve in place of the traditional PowerVM AIX VIO server. So they're providing virtual I/O for other LPARs (this is how we ended up sending 64k packets into the bnx2x nics via open vswitch). The DKMS modules enable that function. It also serves to restrict what we can do with the OS in terms of trying other versions; the Novalink software is supported only on Xenial. Trying to rebuild a machine on artful without Novalink means none of the other LPARs on that machine will run, which will be very disruptive for us, even on a test machine.

We could probably find a way to test artful on a VM, but then that would be using a virtual ethernet adapter and we wouldn't be testing the bnx2x code. I don't know if that would be valuable to you?