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The lost cramfs patch (was: Debian Investigation Report after Server Compromises)



---- Original Message -----
>From: "Florian Ernst" <florian@uni-hd.de>
>To: <debian-user@lists.debian.org>
>Sent: Wednesday, December 03, 2003 5:31 PM
>Subject: Re: Debian Investigation Report after Server Compromises
>
>Hello Benedict!
>
>On Wed, Dec 03, 2003 at 04:25:21PM +0100, Benedict Verheyen wrote:
>>Is there a page anywhere (if not, there should be one) or info on what
>>type of patches are added to a debianized kernel and where to find
them.
>
>I don't know about a page, but I find a long list in
>/usr/share/doc/kernel-image-`uname -r`
>You can find the patches themselves in the Debian archives (.diff.gz),
>and recently there are kernel-patch-debian debs available which
>contain all the applied patches.
>
>Cheers,
>Flo

Flo, thanks for the info.
I checked the kernel-image dir and indeed i found a lot of files there.
However, i only found one reference to cramfs and it was in
README.Debian.1st.gz:
Quote: "
* Added initrd support for cramfs in init/do_mounts.c
* Set time fields to zero in fs/cramfs/inode.c
"

I didn't find anything regarding cramfs patches so i guess the changes
necessary for Debian are located in the 2 files described above and
there probably isn't a patch that one can download to do this.
Now, this should be a problem in cramfs isn't needed by a Debian
initrd. That i don't know.

Then i went on to search in the kernel-source-2.4.21 directory.
The kernel-source-2.4.21 directory contains also a lot of files and
there are some more comments on cramfs.

The debian.README.gz file has more info on initrd:
Quote:
"... and make sure that you have applied the cramfs initrd patch to the
kernel sources (or modified mkinitrd config not to create a cramfs
initrd)
The cramfs initrd patch is shipped with Debian Kernel sources"

That's all i've found on cramfs.
The person on this list was using LVM which has it's own initrd creating
script (lvmcreate_initrd) and i don't think it uses cramfs so in that
case
he should be ok to create a kernel from the vanilla sources.
In the other case, he could adjust /etc/mkinitrd/mkinitrd.conf to not
use cramfs when creating an initrd by changing the MKIMAGE setting
in mkinitrd.conf. Not sure what you could add instead.
I've seen references to but i'm not sure if this produces a working
kernel:
MKIMAGE='genromfs -f /dev/fd/1 -d %s | gzip -9 > %s'

I then found http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=149236
Quote: "
Please read th description of initrd-tools.  It only works with Debian.
The patch is listed in the README file of kernel-source.
Herbert Xu"

Well, i went over to the kernel-sources-2.4.21 and i checked the
README (i think he means README.gz) and i didn't find any reference
too cramfs either. The original bug filer apparently also had problems
with the rather obscure references to the cramfs patch that nobody
seems able to find. It's bad timing as a lot of people want to compile
vanilla kernels sources yet are blocked because they can't find any
link to that patch.
They then refer too:

kernel-package_8.005.dsc
  to pool/main/k/kernel-package/kernel-package_8.005.dsc
kernel-package_8.005.tar.gz
  to pool/main/k/kernel-package/kernel-package_8.005.tar.gz
kernel-package_8.005_all.deb
  to pool/main/k/kernel-package/kernel-package_8.005_all.deb

I then tried to see if i could use apt-cache search to find something
regarding cramfs but it ended up with cramfsprogs and mkcramfs.
apt-cache search kernel-patch | grep cramfs doesn't result in anything.
It seems as if the Debian archives is the only place where you can get
this patch.

So: Where is this patch hiding and how can you get it?

Thanks,
Benedict





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