RE: mondo and Debian
Martin Michlmayr [mailto:tbm@cyrius.com] wrote:-
> I'm a Debian quality assurance person and I noticed you commenting on
> some of mondo's bug in our Bug Tracking System recently. There were
> some license problems with our mindi-kernel package because it
> contained pre-compiled kernel modules without any source code. This
> might just have been a packaging issue, but the package maintainer
> didn't respond to email (although he seems to be around) so the
> package was removed (see http://bugs.debian.org/223993). Now, mindi
> is uninstallable in Debian because it depends on this removed
> mini-kernel package, and in turn mondo is uninstallable because it
> depends on mindi.
Hi Martin,
I am happy to help if I can.
It is of course the Debian team's prerogative to decide which packages to
include and how to include them. I respect and acknowledge that.
Hector has already taken it upon himself to try to solve part of the source
of this philosophical incompatibility between Debian and Mondo. Kudos,
Hector! He is looking at rootfs, specifically - not what you're e-mailing me
about, but still a matter for concern within Debian because rootfs contains
precompiled binaries. I just thought I should mention that Hector is aware
of Debian's peculiar (meaning specific, in this context) needs and is
working with me to accommodate them.
Bear in mind that the principle reason for the mindi-kernel's existence is
(or was) the nonstandard nature of Debian's kernel. The use of cramfs in the
kernel made it incompatible with Mindi. Mindi will run fine without
mindi-kernel, so long as your kernel is sane. Debian's kernels, until
recently, weren't, as has been discussed ad nauseam on Mondo's mailing list.
The latest kernel (from the 3.0 r1 CD 4 or 5, I think but I'm not sure) was
fine, though, IIRC.
Anyway, the long-term fix is for someone on the Debian team to make Mindi
work with the nonstandard Debian kernel that uses cramfs. Then mindi-kernel
won't be necessary. The only people outside Debian who need it are Red Hat
6.x users, AFAIK.
I hope I have been of some help. If you have any other questions or
comments, please do not hesitate to contact me.
-Hugo
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