Bug#626217: Default /etc/kernel-img.conf should have do_symlinks=no; nothing needs those links now

[Josh Triplett <josh@joshtriplett.org>]

On Tue, Feb 25, 2014 at 05:45:29PM +0000, Ben Hutchings wrote:
> On Tue, 2014-02-25 at 09:30 -0800, Josh Triplett wrote:
> > On Tue, Feb 25, 2014 at 05:10:42PM +0000, Ben Hutchings wrote:
> > > On Tue, 2014-02-25 at 16:18 +0300, Cyril Brulebois wrote:
> > > > Hi Ben,
> > > > 
> > > > Ben Hutchings <ben@decadent.org.uk> (2011-05-16):
> > > > > On Mon, 2011-05-09 at 17:17 -0700, Josh Triplett wrote:
> > > > > > Package: base-installer
> > > > > > Severity: normal
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > Now that the various bootloaders have hooks to handle kernel
> > > > > > installation, or otherwise automatically handle all kernels via their
> > > > > > actual paths, do_symlinks doesn't seem necessary anymore.  Please
> > > > > > consider defaulting it to "no".
> > > > > 
> > > > > Josh, this is simply not true.  Only grub and syslinux create menus of
> > > > > all installed kernels.  I hope to get this changed for wheezy, but can't
> > > > > promise it.
> > > > 
> > > > can you please send us an update to see how we stand WRT this bug report?
> > > 
> > > I haven't done anything about this and don't expect to do so any time
> > > soon.
> > > 
> > > I think the GRUB maintainers are hoping to be able to support ~all our
> > > Linux architectures, so we may at some point be able to stop supporting
> > > direct loading of the kernel by the stupider boot-loaders.  We're not
> > > there yet, though.
> > 
> > Do the different architectures use different pre-seeds, or different
> > base-installer configurations?  Might it be possible to keep
> > do_symlinks=yes on architectures where the bootloader requires the
> > symlinks, while eliminating it on the architectures that no longer need
> > that?
> 
> It might but I hardly think it's worth the effort.  For example lilo
> still exists so we can't get rid of them on x86 yet.

Arguably it should be the job of the lilo maintainer scripts to work
around the deficiencies of lilo...

But in any case, it's clear this won't be changing any time soon, sigh.

- Josh Triplett