Your message dated Wed, 16 Sep 2026 14:23:47 +0200
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has caused the Debian Bug report #1147076,
regarding virtme-ng: please allow using regular build of busybox (as opposed to
busybox-static)
to be marked as done.
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1147076: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1147076
Debian Bug Tracking System
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--- Begin Message ---
Package: virtme-ng
Version: 1.41-1
Severity: normal
virtme-ng currently depends on bysubox-static. This package
was built to be used for rescue purposes, to restore a badly
damaged filesystem with no presence of initrd or a rescue
media. For one, it was not intended to be used in regular
system initrd, it has quite some shortcoming in this context.
However, since both regular and static builds of busybox
provide the same binary ([/usr]/bin/busybox), they conflict
with each other. So, when busybox-static is installed, it
is now used for the regular system initrd too.
virtme-ng is the only package in debian which depends on
bysubox-static. All other packages with busybox dependency
usually depends on either regular or static build, allowing
either of them to satisfy the dependency. So installing
reuglar busybox is enough.
But when one installs virtme-ng, you're forcing static busybox
in their system initrd. Which is not good, becaue it is not
intended to be used there at all.
At the same time, it looks like initrd you build for qemu
(where you use busybox-static) also includes other binaries,
not just busybox. For these binaries, regular libc.so is
needed. So you ends up with having two libcs in that initrd,
when just one is sufficient. I must admit I haven't studied
scripts close enough, might be I'm wrong here.
It's quite easy to handle regular build of busybox in initrd.
You need to copy the libraries it is linked to, -- for that,
there's `ldd` tool, - copy everything which starts with /
(omitting linux-vdso.so).
This long-term conflict between busybox and busybox-static
pacages should be resolved somehow (it's been a more than
two decades already). And I'm thinking about removing
the static build of busybox entirely. See #1147074 about
this. Obviously, before #1147074 is fixed, we shluld fix
this issue in virtme-ng.
Thanks,
/mjt
--- End Message ---
--- Begin Message ---
Seems that virtme-ng already looks for busybox-static so it should
keep working once you rename the binary:
https://github.com/arighi/virtme-ng/blob/main/virtme/mkinitramfs.py#L221
https://github.com/arighi/virtme-ng/blob/main/virtme_ng_init/src/main.rs#L445
Thanks for looking into this :)
--- End Message ---
