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Bug#987266: preinst check for kernel release > 255 may no longer be needed



On 04/03/2022 09:50, Aurelien Jarno wrote:
On 2022-03-04 09:19, Emilio Pozuelo Monfort wrote:
Hi,

On Sun, 26 Sep 2021 09:57:02 +0200 Salvatore Bonaccorso <carnil@debian.org> wrote:
Hi Aurelien,

On Tue, Apr 20, 2021 at 06:36:33PM +0200, Andras Korn wrote:
Package: libc6
Version: 2.31-11
Severity: normal
Hi,
due to
https://salsa.debian.org/glibc-team/glibc/-/commit/6ddfa57577af0d96df9ddd7be401f5ce9a9bcc0f
(a commit from 2004) the preinst script for glibc checks whether the
"z" in the "x.y.z" of the kernel version is less than 255. If yes,
the package refuses to install.
I hit this problem on a box with a custom 4.9.266 kernel.
Based on this lkml thread:
https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/7pR0YCctzN9phpuEChlL7_SS6auHOM80bZBcGBTZPuMkc6XjKw7HUXf9vZUPi-IaV2gTtsRVXgywQbja8xpzjGRDGWJsVYSGQN5sNuX1yaQ=@protonmail.com/T/,
the check is no longer needed because the kernel caps the version
code it reports to 255, even if uname prints a higher number.
Of course, you could conceivably still hit the problem with earlier
kernels, so I suppose the logic of the check should be modified, not
removed entirely, to be technically correct.
If forced at gunpoint to make a guess, I would guess, though, that
removing the check would have very little actual impact; it also
doesn't protect the user from installing a kernel with an
unsupported version number after having installed glibc.

Prompted by
https://lore.kernel.org/stable/YVAhOlTsb0NK0BVi@kroah.com/T/#t and
given this was addressed with
https://salsa.debian.org/glibc-team/glibc/-/commit/b3c76cf1cd0c8b6e4844c6362a45143c136a2900
is this something we should do consider as well for the older releases
where it is not acutally needed for people compiling their own custom
kernels?

Another stretch user brought this up [1]. I suppose there are and as time
passes (with current stable kernel versions getting higher) there will be
more users affected by this in buster and bullseye. Have you further
considered including this fix in a proposed-update?

Yep I have submitted #1005906 for bullseye, and I have committed the fix
to the buster branch, but not yet submitted the bug.

I was wondering what docker had to do with all this, until I realized you meant #1005949 :)

Stretch is going to be more complicated as we still support 2.6.32
kernels, which means the third version level actually still makes sense.

I'm surprised we support that. However in any case we wouldn't need to backport [1], we could just backport [2] and support both 2.6.32 as well as e.g. 4.14.264. Wouldn't that work?

Cheers,
Emilio

[1] https://salsa.debian.org/glibc-team/glibc/-/commit/5452b62ded81132ebedf3db82577de5277479b27 [2] https://salsa.debian.org/glibc-team/glibc/-/commit/b3c76cf1cd0c8b6e4844c6362a45143c136a2900


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