Dear Ian, Thanks for your detailed comments!
> I think your patch will break things by automatically installing (via > the initramfs hook in the kernel postinst) whatever kernel was most > recently installed/upgraded, instead of the latest kernel by version. > We do not want this: consider people who still have stable+testing in > their sources.list and the stable+testing kernel's both installed, they > are expecting to use the testing kernel and do not want to get a > surprise stable kernel installed whenever a DSA is issued against the > Linux package in stable. I understand your concern. Yes, the patch will change the behavior as the case you mentioned. However I feel it's still strange by current mechanism, using your case as example, the "testing" kernel images will get rebuilt when DSA (to "stable") is issued. In this case I think only stuff related to stable kernel can be modified, and all testing kernel stuff should be left untouched. So I consider there's a "bug" here need to be fixed. > An acceptable alternative to your patch might be to add support for a > new option in /etc/default/flash-kernel e.g. LINUX_KERNEL_VERSION which > names an explicit version which is the one which should should always > be installed in flash (unless overridden on the command line). Care > would need to be taken that the kernel exists and to do the right thing > if it is is removed. I like the idea to introduce an option for kernel version, but I also feel terrible considering that option need to be updated manually when kernel ABI gets changed. I see there're a few scripts under /etc/kernel/postinst.d/ which seems to monitor the kernel ABI changing. (also noticed the existence of flash-kernel script there...) I'm not familiar with that part, so need some time to go over. > I think a suitable algorithm for determining the version would be to > consider in order: > > 1. The version on the command line, if any. If one is given but > doesn't exist then error out. > 2. The version from /etc/default/flash > -kernel:$LINUX_KERNEL_VERSION, if it doesn't exist then fall > through to next option(*) with a big fat warning printed. > 3. The currently installed version with the greatest version > number. I feel comfortable with this order. And I think there need to be added another rule: only if the kernel version (deciding from the order list) matches the <kver> from update-initramfs command, the flash-kernel should not update boot images otherwise. > The fall through from option 2 to option 3 is important, otherwise a > kernel removal/upgrade/install (which invokes flash-kernel) may find > itself unable to complete if the desired kernel is missing and abort > the whole operation, which will be potentially tricky to recover from > since it will block further apt/dpkg operations until it is sorted out. > Installing the latest kernel if the preferred option is not available > seems better than failing in this case. > People who then want to boot an older kernel could set > LINUX_KERNEL_VERSION and call flash-kernel to make it take effect. I totally agree. Thanks for your consideration in overall! I'll think your points over again, and try to work out a solution. Cheers, Roger -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected] Archive: https://lists.debian.org/CAEQ9gEm0_CQOL=pf=x082acablt6cz+302ggtptpdg_gaqa...@mail.gmail.com
