Bug#594127: Fix for bug number 590028 is incomplete
Package: s390-tools
Version: 1.8.3-2
Severity: serious
s390-tools version 1.8.3-2 was recently migrated to testing, and it
contained a fix for Debian bug report 590028. However, this fix is
incomplete, for two reasons:
(1) the hook scripts provided,
/etc/kernel/postinst.d/zz-zipl and /etc/kernel/postrm.d/zz-zipl,
do not maintain the symbolic links. The zipl boot loader typically
uses the historic symbolic links (/boot/vmlinuz, /boot/initrd.img,
/boot/vmlinuz.old, and /boot/initrd.img.old) in its configuration
file (/etc/zipl.conf) so that the configuration file does not need
to be updated with each kernel install or remove, as grub-legacy's
configuration file does (/boot/grub/menu.lst). The advantage of
using the symbolic links is that the configuration file never
needs to be maintained when a kernel is installed or removed.
The disadvantage of this method is that the symbolic links
themselves must be maintained when a kernel image is installed
or removed.
Historically, the maintainer scripts for the kernel image package,
whether they are for a stock kernel or a custom kernel created by
make-kpkg, maintained the symbolic links, subject to configuration
statements in /etc/kernel-img.conf, such as do_symlinks,
relative_links, and link_in_boot. The maintainer scripts for
stock kernel images still support this, as far as I know.
However, the maintainer scripts for kernel image packages created
by newer releases of make-kpkg, as well as the maintainer scripts
for kernel image packages created by "make deb-pkg" (from 2.6.31
kernel source packages and later) do not contain logic to maintain
the symbolic links. For boot loaders which rely on symbolic links,
such as zipl and lilo typically do, the boot loader hook scripts
must maintain the symbolic links.
(The alternative, of course, is for the boot loader hook scripts
to maintain the boot loader configuration file directly,
/etc/zipl.conf in this case, so that symbolic links are not needed.)
(2) The second reason that this fix is incomplete is that the package
does not contain an initramfs hook script. The latest version of
initramfs-tools, 0.98, now expects boot loaders which rely on a
list of blocks saved at boot loader map installer time, such as lilo
and zipl, to provide a hook script in /etc/initramfs/post-update.d
to react to "update-initramfs -u ...". This script does not
use the zz- prefix, nor does it need to maintain symbolic links,
but it does need to re-run the boot loader, redirecting standard
output to standard error as the kernel hook scripts do.
I one again encourage you to look at the following generic scripts
which I have been using for months quite satisfactorily. I believe
that they can be made zipl-specific without much effort:
http://www.wowway.com/~zlinuxman/kernel/postinst.d/zz-bootloader
(for installation in /etc/kernel/postinst.d)
http://www.wowway.com/~zlinuxman/kernel/postrm.d/zz-bootloader
(for installation in /etc/kernel/postrm.d)
http://www.wowway.com/~zlinuxman/initramfs/post-update.d/bootloader
(for installation in /etc/initramfs/post-update.d)
--
.''`. Stephen Powell
: :' :
`. `'`
`-
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