Bug#636123: linux-image-2.6.39 not booting due to older package (not in list of dependencies!)
(culling the cc list)
Hi Luke,
Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote:
(out of order for convenience)
> (* i.e. ignoring that the report is coming from someone whom many
> debian developers feel is
First things first. I am not a DD, so no need to pay much mind to
my thoughts on this, but:
1. Please, write in complete sentences, correctly punctuated, with
capital letters at the beginning. Sometimes people (like e.e.
cummings) are able to provide valuable contributions without doing
so, and I don't mind that. But all else being equal, standard
punctuation is easier to read. It sends a message that you are
willing to spend time to make others' lives more pleasant.
2. Please, try to separate social and political from technical
discussion. Some people will want to skip the first two whenever
feasible; you can help such people by keeping the meta-discussion
separate.
3. When working with other people, it can help to listen and to be
willing to learn. Doubly so when asking for someone to spend time
to help you. This is true for anyone --- it has nothing to do
with not being a DD. E.g., Ben seems to understand this well and
I have always found him to be humble.
Ok, on to the actual report.
> Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote:
>> now, i've discussed this on the bugtracker and there clearly isn't -
>> and really shouldn't be - a listed debian dependency between
>> linux-image-2.6.39 kernel and a userspace library. however, there
>> clearly *is* a dependency because "It Don't Wurk (tm)".
Unfortunately this is very vague. What would be useful before
discussing fixes is to know:
1. What is broken? I.e., what steps produce what unexpected result,
and why is it unexpected?
2. Under what conditions does it happen? For example, maybe using
libdevmapper (<= X) with linux versions >= Y always produces these
symptoms.
3. Is this specific to Debian or does it apply to the upstream packages,
too? If the latter, there has probably already been some non
Debian-specific discussion on an appropriate fix.
4. How did this compatibility break occur? For example, maybe it was
deliberate, or maybe it is a bug in linux versions >= Y.
You have mentioned that it is hard to downgrade packages like
libdevmapper. I'm actually skeptical (sorry) because in practice I have
found packages from snapshot.debian.org make that not so hard, but perhaps
there is something at play making it impossible. In such a case, I
would suggest reproducing the problem in a virtual machine or using
debian-live, leaving your ordinary installation untouched.
I don't want to discuss the Breaks relation you proposed (it is
problematic in a few ways --- for example, it is not possible to
retroactively change the dependencies of old versions of a package).
More to the point, we need to have a clear description of the bug
before we can do anything.
If I were in your shoes, I would come up with a simple demonstration
of the problem and file a new report. This one's derailed and it is
hard to find the signal in the noise.
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