Bug#626851: linux-image-2.6.38-2-amd64: after last update fails to boot

[Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>]

severity 626851 minor
quit

Rares Aioanei wrote:

> CONFIG_BLK_DEV_SD was the culprit. However, I don't understand exactly what
> happened, since I did not alter no config file. I guess it's something I'm
> missing; now it's all ok. Sorry for the bother. :-)

Okay, that's puzzling.  I think I've missed something in your description
of the problem: could you please enlighten me?

If I understand correctly now:

 * you always build the kernel from source, never using the pre-built
   linux-image-... files.

 * the configuration you use (with "make *config" or by copying in a
   .config file) is made by hand, not the stock configuration.

 * for some reason, versions at and before 2.6.38-4 correctly included
   CONFIG_BLK_DEV_SD in that .config file, and later versions did not.

Is that right?  It's possible that some dependency between
configuration items changed in a bad way, but without knowing exactly
how the configuration was chosen that is hard to check.

The configuration system is documented in
"Documentation/kbuild/kconfig-language.txt".

For now, I'm lowering the severity since it seems you have a working
system.  If you have ideas for how "make config" could work, better
documentation, build-time sanity checks, run-time error messages,
etc. to improve this, then maybe this can move forward; otherwise,
please feel free to close this bug by sending mail to
626851-done@bugs.debian.org.

Sorry for all the confusion.
Jonathan