Bug#698203: Not a directory at /var/lib/dpkg/info/linux-base.postinst line 1177. (extlinux)

["Trent W. Buck" <trentbuck@gmail.com>]

Package: linux-base
Version: 3.5
Severity: minor

I did the following:

  - basic squeeze install, choose no bootloader,
  - manually do an extlinux install in /boot (extlinux package is NOT installed)
  - set link_in_boot=yes in kernel-img.conf

Those are about the only things I did.  Then I tried to upgrade from
squeeze to wheezy and got

    Not a directory at /var/lib/dpkg/info/linux-base.postinst line 1177.

...without further helpful output.  That line is part of a generic
function, so I straced dpkg --configure -a and found

    4875  open("/boot/extlinux/options.cfg", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOTDIR (Not a directory)

I have not investigated further but I guess this is because linux-base
is finding /boot/ldlinux.sys and assuming it was configured in the way
update-extlinux does it.

FWIW even when I do install extlinux via apt, I typically have a
static /boot/syslinux.cfg and I disable update-extlinux so it doesn't
run.

If you aren't interested in supporting odd extlinux setups, that's OK
with me, but I would appreciate a less obscure error message.

Here is what my system looks like:

    root@debian:~# cat /etc/kernel-img.conf
    # Kernel image management overrides
    # See kernel-img.conf(5) for details
    do_symlinks = yes
    do_bootloader = no
    do_initrd = yes
    link_in_boot = yes

    root@debian:~# find /boot -ls
    344065    4 drwxr-xr-x   2 root     root         4096 Jan 15 17:06 /boot
    344067  108 -rw-r--r--   1 root     root       106172 Sep 24 00:08 /boot/config-2.6.32-5-amd64
    344068 1632 -rw-r--r--   1 root     root      1666397 Sep 24 00:08 /boot/System.map-2.6.32-5-amd64
    344069    0 lrwxrwxrwx   1 root     root           22 Jan 15 15:45 /boot/vmlinuz -> vmlinuz-2.6.32-5-amd64
    344071    0 lrwxrwxrwx   1 root     root           25 Jan 15 15:45 /boot/initrd.img -> initrd.img-2.6.32-5-amd64
    344072   60 -rwxr-xr-x   1 root     root        55176 Jan 15 15:45 /boot/extlinux
    344066 2372 -rw-r--r--   1 root     root      2423968 Sep 23 23:59 /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-5-amd64
    344080 8700 -rw-r--r--   1 root     root      8891560 Jan 15 17:06 /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-5-amd64
    344073   60 -rw-r--r--   1 root     root        56164 Jan 15 15:46 /boot/menu.c32
    344074   32 -r--r--r--   1 root     root        32256 Jan 15 15:46 /boot/ldlinux.sys
    344076    4 -rw-r--r--   1 root     root          457 Jan 15 15:54 /boot/syslinux.cfg
    344070 2060 -rw-r--r--   1 root     root      2101443 Dec 20 01:19 /boot/System.map-3.2.0-4-amd64
    344075    4 -rw-r--r--   1 root     root          445 Jan 15 15:54 /boot/syslinux.cfg~
    344078  132 -rw-r--r--   1 root     root       128903 Dec 20 01:19 /boot/config-3.2.0-4-amd64
    344079 2768 -rw-r--r--   1 root     root      2829472 Dec 20 01:16 /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-4-amd64

    root@debian:~# cat /proc/partitions
    major minor  #blocks  name

       8        0    8388608 sda

    root@debian:~# cat /proc/mounts
    rootfs / rootfs rw 0 0
    none /sys sysfs rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime 0 0
    none /proc proc rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime 0 0
    none /dev devtmpfs rw,relatime,size=508624k,nr_inodes=127156,mode=755 0 0
    none /dev/pts devpts rw,nosuid,noexec,relatime,gid=5,mode=620,ptmxmode=000 0 0
    /dev/disk/by-label/root / ext2 rw,relatime,errors=remount-ro 0 0
    tmpfs /lib/init/rw tmpfs rw,nosuid,relatime,mode=755 0 0
    tmpfs /dev/shm tmpfs rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime 0 0
    /dev/disk/by-label/root /run ext2 rw,relatime,errors=remount-ro 0 0
    /dev/disk/by-label/root /run/lock ext2 rw,relatime,errors=remount-ro 0 0
    tmpfs /run/shm tmpfs rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime 0 0