Re: Bug#756464: upgrade-reports: [kfreebsd] dist-upgrade to jessie removes the kernel
tags 752194 - help
thanks
> Jan Henke <Jan.Henke@taujhe.de> (2014-09-26):
> > as far as I know the main mechanism for Linux is to have a meta-package
> > like "linux-generic" which depends on the latest kernel version. On a
> > dist upgrade this package is updated to a new version, which depends on
> > the new kernel version.
That was my guess, but I've actually gone and tried this from a squeeze
linux-amd64 install:
Firstly, I don't have any such metapackage! there's a
linux-image-2.6-amd64, whih Depends on the latest kernel package in
that stable branch, which is linux-image-2.6.32-5-amd64.
Then trying to dist-upgrade to wheezy, doesn't upgrade the kernel at
all! (Or remove the old one; see below). It seems to be a completely
manual step, so we probably shouldn't expect it to happen during a dist-
upgrade, which is kind of what the Breaks: was trying to effect.
On 19:08, Cyril Brulebois wrote:
> [...] your userland package needs to support both kernel versions to
> handle the upgrade step.
Thanks for reminding me of what should have been obvious: we support
this anyway! Our userland has to still work on a wheezy 9.0 kernel
because the buildds are still using it, right up until release.
The ABI breaks we are talking about are probably not so difficult that
we can't work around them; I'll work on that and see if we would be
able to simply drop the Breaks:
(Just wonder if there's any sense in the kernel package having a
Recommends on the updated userland?)
I wonder what loss of functionality is considered acceptable while the
old kernel is still running. The kind of things we are talking about
are using ifconfig to create/reconfigure network interfaces, or modify
active firewall rules via pfctl.
The GNU/Linux situation comes to mind, where there may not be kernel
ABI changes, but still significant changes in useland (systemd as pid1)
which could mean that even whole desktops don't work properly until
after a reboot. (Not sure if systemd can provide all the required
functionality until the kernel is upgraded too?)
With respect to GNOME, I think someone made reference to the release
notes, arguing that for upgrades there is only a requirement for a
text-mode login shell, serial or SSH session to continue working until
the dist-upgrade is finished, then allow a clean reboot into the new
kernel afterward:
https://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/amd64/release-notes/ch-upgrading.en.html#upgrade-preparations
I'm sure we could easily have kfreebsd this functional after a dist-
upgrade, if not much more.
Removing 'help' tag as this is probably all I needed to know to get to
work on this. Thanks again.
Regards,
--
Steven Chamberlain
steven@pyro.eu.org
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