Hi,
On 2/13/19 1:09 PM, Ian Jackson wrote: > I would like to recount a situation. I'm not sure where, if anywhere, > the root bug(s) lie, but I am inclined to say that a big part of the > problem was a change to the contents of jessie-backports. I would be > interested to hear what the backports team and ftpmaster have to say; > in particular, if anyone knows the answers to my questions below. > > My tentative conclusions are that: > > 1. Packages should not be removed from foo-backports just because a > similar package is in foo-security, because there are situations where > a host may have been relying on the package being in foo-backports and > a similar (even, newer) package being in foo-security is not > sufficient. I very much disagree with that. That situation obsoleted the one in -backports, and thus it made no sense to continue to carry it. > 2. Cruft removal in stable releases, including in -backports, should > perhaps be done with care/caution/announcement or something. -backports accompanies stable. There was no package removed from the complete suite of stable + -backports. Also, we also remove packages from -backports when they become unavailable in testing/unstable and thus can't be considered a backport anymore. That includes packages that weren't even in stable - which isn't an easy decision, but it doesn't make sense to carry packages solely in -backports (which isn't the case here - just as a help for understanding the background). > Using the jessie-backports kernel with the jessie installer involves > using the preseed hook mechanism to add jessie-backports to the > target's apt sources, and an in-target apt-get install rune to install > the kernel package. > > (Using the jessie-backports kernel also involves editing the installer > image to have the jessie-backports kernel and modules, but that is not > relevant to this tale.) I don't really follow - you now can get rid of that special casing (which had to be added specifically) and reduce complexity. I actually see this even as a win situation for your setup. > However, after that change to the archive, the dependency resolver > from jessie's apt, in our CI, is no longer willing to update to > linux-base from jessie-security. (I have not yet investigated in > detail but I suspect that the apt-get -t jessie-backports rune above > is part of that causal chain.) Please simply remove the special casing and move on? I really don't understand why this needs to be made a big fuzz about. > The reason I say that I am not sure is that the CI commit which added > that rune had, according to its commit message, an additional effect > of putting backports in the apt sources; perhaps that latter would > have been sufficient. (After I have sent this mail I am going to mess > about with the system to find a way to get it working properly again.) > > Q: Was `apt-get install -t backports linux-base' > unnecessary (and wrong) ? If you needed the newer package that would be the sensible approach. But things changed, it is _now_ unecessary (and was even before removal of the package from backports). So that special casing can get dropped. > It is unfortunate that something which worked for a period of over 2 > years was broken by an archive change. Sometimes things change. The package wouldn't be maintained in backports anymore and thus even had put you in a bad spot if you wouldn't have pulled in the package from stable directly, even if we kept it around (and dangling and unsupported and ...) > Q. Why was linux-base removed from jessie-backports ? Because it was pointed out to me and it was the sensible thing to do. While I now see that it causes issues for specifically crafted setups like you have, technically it was the proper thing to do - and now knowing that it caused issues for your setup I very likely would still do it because having unsupported packages lying around makes very little sense because it sends the wrong message. Thanks for bringing this to our attention. I think what we can do is announce removal of packages to make people aware of the whys. Cheers, Rhonda
