On Wed, 20 Nov 2013 23:22:46 +0100 Arno <aelschur...@hotmail.com> wrote: > Package: src:linux > Version: 3.11.8-1 > Severity: normal > > Dearest maintainer, > > The latest kernel upgrade fails to complete its installation on my system. If > I remember correctly, the previous new kernel failed to install in the same > way but I chose to work around it instead of reporting it back then. > > The symptom is a failing postinst script because initrd is missing:
I recently found this bug myself while reviewing the maintainer scripts. > If I'm reading the postinst script correctly, this error is from either > line 383 or line 422, which is called from image_magic() if the > destination path is neither missing nor a symlink. This is the case on > my system, because I have set both do_symlinks=no and no_symlinks=yes in > /etc/kernel-img.conf (what's the difference between them?). do_symlinks = no disables creating symlinks for the 'default' kernel and initrd. no_symlinks = yes enables copying to the default filenames. > For new > kernels, the initrd has not been generated yet (that happens at the end > of the script) and cp doesn't handle that case as gracefully as ln does. Yes. This regression was introduced when we moved the call to update- initramfs into a hook script (around version 2.6.38). > Even though the failure mode is created by no_symlinks in kernel-img.conf, > simply changing those settings does not allow the installation to > continue. That's because the /initrd.img file still exists, and > image_magic() is driven by the existing paths, not the config settings. > Conversely, simply setting no_symlinks=yes in the config does not prevent > a new kernel to be installed initially -- but as soon as a new initrd is > generated (and the /initrd symlink is replaced with a file), the next > kernel installation will fail regardless of the current config setting. I'm afraid my answer to this is that this configuration is no longer supported. If many people were using it, I would try to fix it, but it seems that yours was the only bug report. Future kernel packages will warn and will create symlinks instead of copying. Ben. -- Ben Hutchings The most exhausting thing in life is being insincere. - Anne Morrow Lindberg
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