Debian Bug report logs - #887263
dkms should suggest e2fsprogs

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Message #5 received at maintonly@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Helmut Grohne <helmut@subdivi.de>

To: maintonly@bugs.debian.org

Subject: dkms should depend on e2fsprogs explicitly

Date: Sun, 14 Jan 2018 20:03:50 +0100

Package: dkms
Version: 2.3-3
User: helmutg@debian.org
Usertags: nonessentiale2fsprogs

Dear maintainer,

We want to make removing e2fsprogs from installations possible. For standard
installations this is not useful, but embedded applications and chroots benefit
from such an option.  For getting there all packages that use e2fsprogs must be
identified and gain a dependency on it as e2fsprogs currently is essential.

dkms was identified as potentially needing such a dependency,
because it mentions tool names from e2fsprogs in the following files:

/usr/sbin/dkms contains mke2fs. According to file it is a Bourne-Again shell script, ASCII text executable, with very long lines

Please investigate whether these cases are actually uses of a tool from
e2fsprogs. Care has been taken to shrink the number of candidates as much as
possible, but a few false positives will remain. After doing so, do one of the
following:

 * Add e2fsprogs to Depends.
 * Add e2fsprogs to Recommends.
 * Close this bug explaining why e2fsprogs is not used by this package.

Once e2fsprogs drops the "Essential: yes" flag, this bug will be upgraded to RC
severity. Please note that lintian will warn about such a dependency before
lintian 2.5.56.

Thanks for your help

Helmut

Message #10 received at 887263@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Andreas Henriksson <andreas@fatal.se>

To: Helmut Grohne <helmut@subdivi.de>, 887263@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Re: dkms should depend on e2fsprogs explicitly

Date: Sun, 21 Jan 2018 10:46:38 +0100

On Sun, Jan 14, 2018 at 08:03:50PM +0100, Helmut Grohne wrote:
> Package: dkms
[...]
> /usr/sbin/dkms contains mke2fs. According to file it is a Bourne-Again shell script, ASCII text executable, with very long lines
[...]

Indeed dkms uses both mke2fs and mkdosfs. There's no relation from dkms
towards dosfstools specified in the dkms package either, which would
otherwise be a sign of how important these commands are to dkms
functionality. 

The commands are (only) used from a function called
"make_driver_disk_floppy" which in turn is invoked (via a call chain)
from "make_driver_disk" and that function checks distro which seems to
be specified from commandline flag -d <distro>. (Note that there's no
debian alternative! There is one for ubuntu though.)
The command to invoke the code path seems to be something like
'dkms mkdriverdisk -d <distro> [...]'.
Note that while today we can probably consider floppies to not be so
common anymore, the default media type in dkms mkdriverdisk is floppy.

I'm not sure how important this functionality is, but the entire thing
seems to be pretty overlooked from a Debian perspective which leads
me to assume a Suggests (rather than Recommends or Depends) might be
suitable.

I'm left with a few questions that it would be great to hear maintainers
view on....
* Is the mkdriverdisk functionality useful at all these days? Maybe
  it should just be patched out (and possibly even removed upstream)?
* If useful, shouldn't someone work on a debian distro code-path?
* Shouldn't floppies be considered uncommon enough that the default
  should be changed to something else?
All of these are off-topic in this particular bug report though and
separate bug reports should probably be opened if there's a need
to discuss any of that. Possibly upstream rather than in Debian.

My conclusion here is that it's likely not the end of the world if
we just closed this bug report. If a package relationship should be
added using 'Suggests: dosfstools, e2fsprogs' would likely be the
most suitable. Maintainers view on this would be nice to hear!

Regards,
Andreas Henriksson

Message #15 received at 887263@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: <Mario.Limonciello@dell.com>

To: <andreas@fatal.se>, <887263@bugs.debian.org>, <pkg-dkms-maint@lists.alioth.debian.org>, <helmut@subdivi.de>

Subject: RE: [Pkg-dkms-maint] Bug#887263: dkms should depend on e2fsprogs explicitly

Date: Mon, 22 Jan 2018 15:34:09 +0000

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Pkg-dkms-maint [mailto:pkg-dkms-maint-
> bounces+mario_limonciello=dell.com@lists.alioth.debian.org] On Behalf Of
> Andreas Henriksson
> Sent: Sunday, January 21, 2018 3:47 AM
> To: Helmut Grohne <helmut@subdivi.de>; 887263@bugs.debian.org
> Subject: [Pkg-dkms-maint] Bug#887263: dkms should depend on e2fsprogs
> explicitly
> 
> On Sun, Jan 14, 2018 at 08:03:50PM +0100, Helmut Grohne wrote:
> > Package: dkms
> [...]
> > /usr/sbin/dkms contains mke2fs. According to file it is a Bourne-Again shell script,
> ASCII text executable, with very long lines
> [...]
> 
> Indeed dkms uses both mke2fs and mkdosfs. There's no relation from dkms
> towards dosfstools specified in the dkms package either, which would
> otherwise be a sign of how important these commands are to dkms
> functionality.
> 
> The commands are (only) used from a function called
> "make_driver_disk_floppy" which in turn is invoked (via a call chain)
> from "make_driver_disk" and that function checks distro which seems to
> be specified from commandline flag -d <distro>. (Note that there's no
> debian alternative! There is one for ubuntu though.)
> The command to invoke the code path seems to be something like
> 'dkms mkdriverdisk -d <distro> [...]'.
> Note that while today we can probably consider floppies to not be so
> common anymore, the default media type in dkms mkdriverdisk is floppy.
> 
> I'm not sure how important this functionality is, but the entire thing
> seems to be pretty overlooked from a Debian perspective which leads
> me to assume a Suggests (rather than Recommends or Depends) might be
> suitable.

I would agree Suggests makes sense in this context.

> 
> I'm left with a few questions that it would be great to hear maintainers
> view on....
> * Is the mkdriverdisk functionality useful at all these days? Maybe
>   it should just be patched out (and possibly even removed upstream)?
It's (obviously) not too useful for Debian, but I believe it's useful for other
distros.

> * If useful, shouldn't someone work on a debian distro code-path?
The ubuntu code path relies on changes that were made to include a special
driver disk handler in d-i.  I'm unsure that it made it back to Debian.

If it did, then it should be as simple as recognizing both Debian and Ubuntu
as the same codepaths.

> * Shouldn't floppies be considered uncommon enough that the default
>   should be changed to something else?

Probably.  I think it is worth proposing this to upstream issue tracker.

> All of these are off-topic in this particular bug report though and
> separate bug reports should probably be opened if there's a need
> to discuss any of that. Possibly upstream rather than in Debian.
> 
> My conclusion here is that it's likely not the end of the world if
> we just closed this bug report. If a package relationship should be
> added using 'Suggests: dosfstools, e2fsprogs' would likely be the
> most suitable. Maintainers view on this would be nice to hear!

I'm not active in DKMS anymore (Someone else in Dell maintains it now),
but hope my comments are useful since I had some history from this.

Message #20 received at 887263@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Andreas Henriksson <andreas@fatal.se>

To: Mario.Limonciello@dell.com

Cc: 887263@bugs.debian.org, pkg-dkms-maint@lists.alioth.debian.org, helmut@subdivi.de

Subject: Re: [Pkg-dkms-maint] Bug#887263: dkms should depend on e2fsprogs explicitly

Date: Mon, 22 Jan 2018 19:33:51 +0100

Control: severity -1 minor
Control: retitle -1 dkms should suggest e2fsprogs

Hello Mario Limonciello,

On Mon, Jan 22, 2018 at 03:34:09PM +0000, Mario.Limonciello@dell.com wrote:
> I would agree Suggests makes sense in this context.
[...]
> I'm not active in DKMS anymore (Someone else in Dell maintains it now),
> but hope my comments are useful since I had some history from this.

Thanks for your detailed feedback. Personally I find it very helpful
just to get some feedback that suggests makes sense. I hope the details
you provided can help current maintainers make the package even better.
I'm adjusting the bug report to reflect that this should be considered
a minor issue (unlike a missing dependency).

Regards,
Andreas Henriksson

Message #29 received at 887263-close@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Gianfranco Costamagna <locutusofborg@debian.org>

To: 887263-close@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Bug#887263: fixed in dkms 2.8.1-3

Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2019 12:49:29 +0000

Source: dkms
Source-Version: 2.8.1-3

We believe that the bug you reported is fixed in the latest version of
dkms, which is due to be installed in the Debian FTP archive.

A summary of the changes between this version and the previous one is
attached.

Thank you for reporting the bug, which will now be closed.  If you
have further comments please address them to 887263@bugs.debian.org,
and the maintainer will reopen the bug report if appropriate.

Debian distribution maintenance software
pp.
Gianfranco Costamagna <locutusofborg@debian.org> (supplier of updated dkms package)

(This message was generated automatically at their request; if you
believe that there is a problem with it please contact the archive
administrators by mailing ftpmaster@ftp-master.debian.org)


-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

Format: 1.8
Date: Fri, 08 Nov 2019 12:39:25 +0100
Source: dkms
Binary: dkms
Architecture: source
Version: 2.8.1-3
Distribution: unstable
Urgency: medium
Maintainer: Dynamic Kernel Modules Support Team <dkms@tracker.debian.org>
Changed-By: Gianfranco Costamagna <locutusofborg@debian.org>
Description:
 dkms       - Dynamic Kernel Module Support Framework
Closes: 826928 840620 881709 887263 896814
Changes:
 dkms (2.8.1-3) unstable; urgency=medium
 .
   * Suggest e2fsprogs (Closes: #887263)
   * Add some verbosity on log messages (Closes: #840620)
   * Depend on lsb-release (Closes: #896814)
   * Do not depend anymore on python3-apport, removed even from experimental
     (Closes: #881709)
   * Add back the pre-depends on lsb-release (Closes: #826928)
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Checksums-Sha256:
 59f19d78a6af7800c7027ad4922c154fb81d1309932b185ceeecba4c20d6248d 1966 dkms_2.8.1-3.dsc
 566b0e7abcefed2bcf4cfcacd646042e8a5d4288346332df88d9e78cfd10ba75 17384 dkms_2.8.1-3.debian.tar.xz
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Files:
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 f150ad1c84478b08893effcf8276bab6 17384 kernel optional dkms_2.8.1-3.debian.tar.xz
 d63e2775421fd24abfc351834f856d2b 6980 kernel optional dkms_2.8.1-3_source.buildinfo

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