Bug#1009106: Now missing kernel module blocklayoutdriver

[Salvatore Bonaccorso <carnil@debian.org>]

Contol: tags -1 confirmed

Hi Andrei,

On Tue, Dec 30, 2025 at 11:19:05AM +0100, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
> On Mon, 29 Dec 2025 at 21:42, Salvatore Bonaccorso <carnil@debian.org> wrote:
> >
> > As we do not really want to diverge from upstream I will see with them
> > how we could improve the user experience here, either making it more
> > clear that when PNFS_BLOCK is enabled as module, the blocklayoutdriver
> > needs to be enabled, making the service only start as you suggested if
> > the blocklayoutdriver is loaded and the rpc file present, clearer
> > documentation or something else.
> 
> Interestingly nfs.systemd(7) suggests nfs-blkmap.service needs to be
> enabled when required, so maybe it should be shipped disabled instead?

I asked upstream (see the forwarded reference), and as the blocklayout
is deprecated and only that one needs blkmapd, the approach will
acutally be to wait that
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-nfs/20260114145435.826165-1-smayhew@redhat.com/
lands, and then we will not ship blkmapd anymore.

I could in theory already now pass --disable=nfsv41, which only
purpose is to enable blkmapd, but I think it is not urgent that we
should not wait to have this landed and get blkmapd away.

It will be a good target to get it away for the forky release and we
have enough exposure until then to see if there is actually someone
complaining about the lost blkmapd.

Regards,
Salvatore