I suppose it's possible that the particular dkms module that failed to build is essential for booting the system, so the new approach that hides this build failure could render the system unbootable without the user realizing it. A bit less catastrophic, but still very serious, would be for the machine to lose network access (wifi driver), which could pose a chicken an egg problem (need network to fix the problem).
So what we have here is a balance between a system with an interrupted release-upgrade, requiring a lot of apt-foo to fix, or a system where dkms rebuilds might have failed, but otherwise upgraded successfully. Both cases could result in an unbootable system, but I tend to agree that the first one (interrupted release-upgrade) is more likely to be much harder to recover (been there). I would like some sort of commitment on the follow-up work for the release upgrader to check the status of dkms builds after the upgrade. Can we get an LP bug for it please? -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Kernel Packages, which is subscribed to dkms in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/2028366 Title: Kernel header installation fails for incompatible DKMS modules Status in dkms package in Ubuntu: Fix Released Status in dkms source package in Jammy: Confirmed Status in dkms source package in Lunar: Fix Released Status in dkms source package in Mantic: Fix Released Bug description: [ Impact ] If a new kernel is installed, all installed DKMS modules are built for that new kernel. There might be incompatible modules that won't compile for the new kernel which results in a kernel header package installation failure. That's bad and not really correct, the incompatible DKMS module is the problem and not the new kernel. In this case, DKMS module build failures should be ignored so that the kernel installation completes. This is especially acute during release-upgrades, as dkms modules are upgraded out of order, and major kernel version are upgraded out of order. Majority of the time there is a new dkms available, which should attempt build & load. However, many modules are often remain broken, no longer needed, or need user to fetch updated versions themselves. [ Test Plan ] * Install jammy * Add module that support v5.15 kernel, but fails to compile with any newer kernels (one can find examples of such dkms modules in the archive, or out of the archive) * Perform release upgrade with patched dkms pre-installed * Release upgrade should succeed, despite unable to compile all dkms modules [ Where problems could occur ] * This is an improvement to the current situation of aborting release upgrade half way through. It doesn't quite resolve the UX to notify the user which dkms modules did not manage to compile, or to ask user to uninstall or to update them. Further UX / hooks might be needed in the release upgrade to complete the story of asking the user what they want to do with regressed dkms modules. [ Other Info ] * See lots and lots of upgrade bugs, failing on dkms module installation To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/dkms/+bug/2028366/+subscriptions -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~kernel-packages Post to : kernel-packages@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~kernel-packages More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp