tags 752194 - help thanks > Jan Henke <jan.he...@taujhe.de> (2014-09-26): > > as far as I know the main mechanism for Linux is to have a meta-package > > like "linux-generic" which depends on the latest kernel version. On a > > dist upgrade this package is updated to a new version, which depends on > > the new kernel version.
That was my guess, but I've actually gone and tried this from a squeeze linux-amd64 install: Firstly, I don't have any such metapackage! there's a linux-image-2.6-amd64, whih Depends on the latest kernel package in that stable branch, which is linux-image-2.6.32-5-amd64. Then trying to dist-upgrade to wheezy, doesn't upgrade the kernel at all! (Or remove the old one; see below). It seems to be a completely manual step, so we probably shouldn't expect it to happen during a dist- upgrade, which is kind of what the Breaks: was trying to effect. On 19:08, Cyril Brulebois wrote: > [...] your userland package needs to support both kernel versions to > handle the upgrade step. Thanks for reminding me of what should have been obvious: we support this anyway! Our userland has to still work on a wheezy 9.0 kernel because the buildds are still using it, right up until release. The ABI breaks we are talking about are probably not so difficult that we can't work around them; I'll work on that and see if we would be able to simply drop the Breaks: (Just wonder if there's any sense in the kernel package having a Recommends on the updated userland?) I wonder what loss of functionality is considered acceptable while the old kernel is still running. The kind of things we are talking about are using ifconfig to create/reconfigure network interfaces, or modify active firewall rules via pfctl. The GNU/Linux situation comes to mind, where there may not be kernel ABI changes, but still significant changes in useland (systemd as pid1) which could mean that even whole desktops don't work properly until after a reboot. (Not sure if systemd can provide all the required functionality until the kernel is upgraded too?) With respect to GNOME, I think someone made reference to the release notes, arguing that for upgrades there is only a requirement for a text-mode login shell, serial or SSH session to continue working until the dist-upgrade is finished, then allow a clean reboot into the new kernel afterward: https://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/amd64/release-notes/ch-upgrading.en.html#upgrade-preparations I'm sure we could easily have kfreebsd this functional after a dist- upgrade, if not much more. Removing 'help' tag as this is probably all I needed to know to get to work on this. Thanks again. Regards, -- Steven Chamberlain ste...@pyro.eu.org -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bsd-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20140926191122.ga18...@squeeze.pyro.eu.org
