-- Please CC me, when replying, since I'm not subscribed to the list.
Hello,
According to DSA-1356-1 [1] there are security updates available for
all linux-image-2.6.18* packages in Etch. One needs to upgrade to
versions named linux-image-2.6.18-5* to benefit from the update.
Now I noticed that on my box the actual update was not installed
automatically by 'aptitude dist-upgrade' and I am still running
linux-image-2.6.18-4-k7. That package was installed automatically
because I installed linux-image-k7 which depends on linux-image-2.6-k7
which then depends on the actual linux-image-2.6.18-4-k7 package.
According to the descriptions of linux-image-* and
linux-image-2.6-*, these depend on the _latest_ "binary image for
Linux kernel". But linux-image-2.6-* still depends on
linux-image-2.6.18-4-*.
IMHO something is really wrong with that. Obviously it is related to
the jump from linux-image-2.6.18-4* to linux-image-2.6.18-5*. I am not
really familiar with the Debian versioning system, but up until the
update before DSA-1356-1, the only thing that changed due to a
security update to the kernel package was the version number but not
the package name.
Packages I found depending on the wrong kernel version:
linux-image-2.6-xen-686, linux-image-2.6-xen-vserver-686,
linux-image-2.6-486, linux-image-2.6-686,
linux-image-2.6-686-bigmem, linux-image-2.6-amd64,
linux-image-2.6-k7, linux-image-2.6-vserver-686,
linux-image-2.6-vserver-k7
according apt-cache on my machine.
Looking a bit closer I can see no way how I or any other Debian user
could get the update automatically, since no package that could have
been installed before DSA-1356-1 depends on those new ones. So anybody
not regularly checking the security site or not subscribed to the
security-announce list will miss those security fixes.
Any comments and clarifications will be much appreciated.
[1] http://www.debian.org/security/2007/dsa-1356
Regards
--
Marcus Blumhagen
"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more
violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move
in the opposite direction."
-- Albert Einstein
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