Bug#978636: move to merged-usr-only?

2020-12-29 Thread Matthias Klumpp
Am Di., 29. Dez. 2020 um 17:39 Uhr schrieb Marco d'Itri :
>
> On Dec 29, Ansgar  wrote:
>
> > as suggested in [1], I would like to see Debian to move to support
> > only the merged-usr filesystem layout.  This would simplfy things for
> > the future and also address the problem with installing files under
> > aliased trees that dpkg has to do for both variants to be supported.
> As the architect of the Debian merged-usr transition, I agree: removing
> support for unmerged systems would simplify many things.
> Thank you Ansgar for bringing this to the CTTE.

Indeed!

> > I'm not asking the committee to decide on a concrete technical
> > implementation for this.  Obviously we would need to also implement a
> > migration path for legacy installations for a move to merged-usr-only
> > to be implemented.  This also isn't relevant for Debian 11 (bullseye),
> > but I would like to have enough time in the Debian 12 (bookworm)
> > cycle.
> Agreed.
> FWIW: we have had for a long time a reliable migration method, the
> usrmerge package.
> Except that on a live system it requires a reboot mid-conversion (due to
> bind mounts created by systemd): since this is inconvenient and mildly
> scary I did not propose wider adoption for buster.
> The best workaround would probably be to run it from the initramfs, but
> I have not been able to actually make this[1] work: I expect that
> somebody who knows initramfs-tools better than I do can fix it quickly.

For package upgrades, we can already perform so-called "offline
upgrades", where the system reboots into a smaller systemd target,
applies all updates and then reboots again into the updated system.
This is implemented in PackageKit as an option and used by GNOME.
Fwupd uses similar concepts for certain firmware updates as well.
Maybe hooking into these facilities is also an option for the usrmerge
upgrade? (unless of course systemd is still interfering even in a
minimal target, that would be a dealbreaker).
More info about offline-upgrades can be found at [1], could be
interesting to look into.

This discussion is probably OT through for the issue at hand (*if* we
make that switch, not the *how* we make it in particular).

Cheers,
Matthias

[1]: 
https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd.offline-updates.html

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Bug#978636: move to merged-usr-only?

2020-12-29 Thread Marco d'Itri
On Dec 29, Ansgar  wrote:

> as suggested in [1], I would like to see Debian to move to support
> only the merged-usr filesystem layout.  This would simplfy things for
> the future and also address the problem with installing files under
> aliased trees that dpkg has to do for both variants to be supported.
As the architect of the Debian merged-usr transition, I agree: removing 
support for unmerged systems would simplify many things.
Thank you Ansgar for bringing this to the CTTE.

> I'm not asking the committee to decide on a concrete technical
> implementation for this.  Obviously we would need to also implement a
> migration path for legacy installations for a move to merged-usr-only
> to be implemented.  This also isn't relevant for Debian 11 (bullseye),
> but I would like to have enough time in the Debian 12 (bookworm)
> cycle.
Agreed.
FWIW: we have had for a long time a reliable migration method, the
usrmerge package.
Except that on a live system it requires a reboot mid-conversion (due to
bind mounts created by systemd): since this is inconvenient and mildly
scary I did not propose wider adoption for buster.
The best workaround would probably be to run it from the initramfs, but
I have not been able to actually make this[1] work: I expect that 
somebody who knows initramfs-tools better than I do can fix it quickly.

[1] https://salsa.debian.org/md/usrmerge/-/tree/initramfs

-- 
ciao,
Marco


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Bug#978636: move to merged-usr-only?

2020-12-29 Thread Ansgar
Package: tech-ctte
X-Debbugs-Cc: debian-de...@lists.debian.org

Hi,

as suggested in [1], I would like to see Debian to move to support
only the merged-usr filesystem layout.  This would simplfy things for
the future and also address the problem with installing files under
aliased trees that dpkg has to do for both variants to be supported.

merged-usr has been the default for new installations since the last
release and (as far as I am aware) no world-breaking bugs have
happened since; some environments such as buildd chroots still do not
use merged-usr.

I would like to ask the technical committee to decide whether we want
to move to merged-usr-only.  It seems to be a case of overlapping
jurisdiction (6.1.2 in the constitution).

I'm not asking the committee to decide on a concrete technical
implementation for this.  Obviously we would need to also implement a
migration path for legacy installations for a move to merged-usr-only
to be implemented.  This also isn't relevant for Debian 11 (bullseye),
but I would like to have enough time in the Debian 12 (bookworm)
cycle.

Ansgar

[1]: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2020/11/#00232
 continued in December: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2020/12/#00386