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Bug#941952: marked as done (linux-headers-3.16.0-6-amd64 package removed from stable repository)

Your message dated Mon, 07 Oct 2019 23:52:03 +0100
with message-id <a1b6ea0a610fbd515697e30c886a2c8f51699634.camel@decadent.org.uk>
and subject line Re: Bug#941952: linux-headers-3.16.0-6-amd64 package removed from stable repository
has caused the Debian Bug report #941952,
regarding linux-headers-3.16.0-6-amd64 package removed from stable repository
to be marked as done.

This means that you claim that the problem has been dealt with.
If this is not the case it is now your responsibility to reopen the
Bug report if necessary, and/or fix the problem forthwith.

(NB: If you are a system administrator and have no idea what this
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-- 
941952: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=941952
Debian Bug Tracking System
Contact owner@bugs.debian.org with problems
--- Begin Message --- 
Package: linux-headers-3.16.0-6-amd64
Version: 3.16.56-1+deb8u1
Severity: normal

Dear Maintainer,

I work for a security focused company and part of my work is to check our DKMS
modules are well supported in Debian, recently I've started to have issues with
the linux-headers-$(uname -r) packages in Debian 8/9, it seems as the kernel
gets updates new linux-headers (linux-image) packages are generated and the
previous ones are removed from the stable repositories, I can workaround this
problem by adding the snapshot repositories, however I'm unsure if this is the
normal behavour in Debian, is there any formal document that states clearly how
these kernel updates are handled to stable users?

At the moment of writing this I'm on a Debian 8.10 system where the running kernel
is: uname -r 3.16.0-4-amd64 which has no matching headers
apt-get install linux-headers-$(uname -r)

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
E: Unable to locate package linux-headers-3.16.0-4-amd64
E: Couldn't find any package by regex 'linux-headers-3.16.0-4-amd64'

The system have more update kernel packages:

$ apt-cache search linux-headers- | grep 3.16
linux-headers-3.16.0-6-all - All header files for Linux 3.16 (meta-package)
linux-headers-3.16.0-6-all-amd64 - All header files for Linux 3.16 (meta-package)
linux-headers-3.16.0-6-amd64 - Header files for Linux 3.16.0-6-amd64
linux-headers-3.16.0-6-common - Common header files for Linux 3.16.0-6
linux-headers-3.16.0-10-all - All header files for Linux 3.16 (meta-package)
linux-headers-3.16.0-10-all-amd64 - All header files for Linux 3.16 (meta-package)
linux-headers-3.16.0-10-amd64 - Header files for Linux 3.16.0-10-amd64
linux-headers-3.16.0-10-common - Common header files for Linux 3.16.0-10

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 8.10
  APT prefers oldoldstable
  APT policy: (500, 'oldoldstable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 3.16.0-4-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.utf8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.utf8 (charmap=UTF-8) (ignored: LC_ALL set to en_US.utf8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)

Versions of packages linux-headers-3.16.0-6-amd64 depends on:
ii  linux-compiler-gcc-4.9-x86     3.16.74-1
ii  linux-headers-3.16.0-6-common  3.16.56-1+deb8u1
ii  linux-kbuild-3.16              3.16.56-1

linux-headers-3.16.0-6-amd64 recommends no packages.

linux-headers-3.16.0-6-amd64 suggests no packages.

-- no debconf information

--- End Message ---
--- Begin Message --- 
Javier López <jalopez@tripwire.com> wrote:
[...]
> it seems as the kernel
> gets updates new linux-headers (linux-image) packages are generated and the
> previous ones are removed from the stable repositories, I can workaround this
> problem by adding the snapshot repositories, however I'm unsure if this is the
> normal behavour in Debian

This is now normal for the Linux kernel packages, but not for packages
in general.  Maintaining a stable kernel module ABI is often
impractical for us, particularly for some of the invasive security
fixes needed over the past 2 years.  Every time we need to break that
ABI, we change the kernel release string and binary package names.

The older packages are then obsolete and not supported in any way by
Debian, and you should not feel obliged to support them either.

> is there any formal document that states clearly how
> these kernel updates are handled to stable users?
[...]

Not precisely.

Users should generally install meta-packages like linux-image-amd64 and
linux-headers-amd64.  (The Debian installer does that.)  When there is
an ABI bump in the kernel during a stable release, the advisory is
supposed to document using "apt upgrade" or "apt-get upgrade
--with-new-pkgs" to upgrade, which will install the new dependency.

There's some documentation of ABI versions:
<https://kernel-team.pages.debian.net/kernel-handbook/ch-versions.html>.

Discussion with the release team about kernel ABI bumps in stable:
<https://lists.debian.org/debian-release/2017/09/msg00008.html>.

Ben.

-- 
Ben Hutchings
Nothing is ever a complete failure;
it can always serve as a bad example.

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