Sorry for accidentally sending from @gmail rather than @debian.org (I'm
still debugging my notmuch setup).
Pascal Hambourg <pascal@plouf.fr.eu.org> writes:
> On 18/05/2025 at 01:00, Nicholas D Steeves wrote:
>> Pascal Hambourg <pascal@plouf.fr.eu.org> writes:
>>>
>>> However it may not work with a system installed from Debian live with
>>> Calamares which appears to set a different btrfs subvolume layout (see
>>> #1104552). (...) so would it be desirable to add
>>> (trivial) support for this case in d-i RC2 ?
>
> Note: this is a one-liner patch. I am ready to open a MR.
>
>> I'm CCing Debian's Calamares maintainer, because I think this is an
>> upstream Calamares bug. I hypothesise that the nature of the Calamares
>> bug is that upstream assumes Ubuntu-style subvolume layout that we never
>> intended to support in Debian.
>
> Thank you, it would be good to know whether this layout comes from
> Calamares upstream, the Debian package or Debian Live configuration.
I cloned everything that seemed relevant, and fairly quickly searched
and scanned, and what I found was that Calamares' btrfs layout can be
configured with a "mount.conf", but it sounds like only if one defaults
to btrfs. We default to ext4, so it falls back to hard-coded. As I
hypothesized, upstream Calamares appears to hard-code Ubuntu-style
layout
src/modules/mount/main.py
143: btrfs_subvolumes = [dict(mountPoint="/", subvolume="/@"), dict(mountPoint="/home", subvolume="/@home")]
>> In case anyone missed the following reply to that bug:
>>
>>> Have you been able to track down those discussions where we decided on
>>> @rootfs?
>
> To be honest, I am not so interested in past discussions. I am more
> concerned about the current inconsistent state and interested in
> aligning partman and Calamares btrfs layouts in one way or the other and
> having rescue mode support both layouts in the meantime.
TLDR: By doing this we would be supporting the Ubuntu layout becoming a
defacto bug-for-bug standard; this wastes the time and effort of
everyone who has already implemented flexible, configurable software,
and rewards supporting static "@, @home" systems to the exclusion of all
else. That's wrong, unjust, and not what Debian is supposed to do.
If the priority is the inconsistent state, lets:
1. Fix Calamares (#1104552 reassigned; MR submitted)
2. Decide if we're going to share the "@home" namespace with Ubuntu
and SUSE. If yes, and the priority is consistency, then we need to
start creating and mounting "@home" (which will sometimes already
exist).
3. Convert bugged installs to standard installs (this is easy, safe, and
revertible)
Cheers,
Nicholas
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