Bug#699808: tech-ctte: syslinux vs the wheezy release
On 05.02.2013 23:55, Don Armstrong wrote: On Wed, 06 Feb 2013, Cyril Brulebois wrote: Daniel Baumann daniel.baum...@progress-technologies.net (05/02/2013): or: * apply the following tested and working patch from #699742 in debian-installer, […] Except that this “tested and working patch” doesn't fix anything. Same issue, as seen by Michael and myself. Is it the intention of the Release Managers not to accept a newer version of syslinux into wheezy? [That is, if the CTTE were to decide to require some fix to d-i, we'd also have to override the RMs?] Given that the syslinux packages in sid are a different major upstream version from those in wheezy, with a raw diffstat of 621 files changed, 36622 insertions(+), 15023 deletions(-) and that upstream version has been in unstable for a little over a week in total, I'm certainly uncomfortable that accepting the new version at this point would be in the best interest of the release. We've already said no to changes in other packages which were significantly smaller and didn't carry the possibility of affecting something as key as the installer. Shipping an installer that was built with a differing version of syslinux than we eventually ship also causes me concern, since the first update to d-i in a point release will obviously be rebuilt against wheezy's syslinux. This introduces a situation that we can't reasonably test beforehand, as we could no longer be confident that the released version of the wheezy installer could be correctly booted on all of our architectures. (tl,dr; right now, yes, we believe the changes are too potentially disruptive.) Regards, Adam -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-ctte-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/9700fa19d26232d0f5501dc6bcb64...@mail.adsl.funky-badger.org
Bug#699808: tech-ctte: syslinux vs the wheezy release
On Tue, Feb 05, 2013 at 01:48:22PM +0100, Julien Cristau wrote: The submitters sincerely hope that all parties can work together for a speedy resolution to this problem, avoiding further delay to this release. As a possibly useful data point for procedural reasons: I've verified on IRC with the submitters that this issue is blocking the release of d-i version RC1. As such, I'd appreciate if the tech-ctte could prioritize this issue over others submitted to their attention (this might imply increasing the severity of this bug as needed). Cheers. -- Stefano Zacchiroli . . . . . . . z...@upsilon.cc . . . . o . . . o . o Maître de conférences . . . . . http://upsilon.cc/zack . . . o . . . o o Debian Project Leader . . . . . . @zack on identi.ca . . o o o . . . o . « the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club » signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Bug#699808: tech-ctte: syslinux vs the wheezy release
On 5 February 2013 22:48, Julien Cristau jcris...@debian.org wrote: Package: tech-ctte - the debian-installer source package, which builds the installer images for debian's releases, build-depends on syslinux - the release freeze for wheezy started in June 2012, and is now in its final stages - one of the prerequisites for the release is a release candidate for the installer - the syslinux maintainer uploaded new upstream versions of his package to unstable, which were unsuitable for wheezy, in November 2012, and again at the end of January 2013 - the latest of these uploads breaks the installer, [...] Isn't this a rationale for d-i to use the stable builds of syslinux present in testing (or potentially testing-proposed-updates) rather than unstable? Cheers, aj -- Anthony Towns a...@erisian.com.au -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-ctte-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/CAJS_LCWkAk+1Cz70xf426wrVoV=hdswsbzteuv8cbteqq-u...@mail.gmail.com
Bug#699808: tech-ctte: syslinux vs the wheezy release
On 06.02.2013 14:17, Anthony Towns wrote: On 5 February 2013 22:48, Julien Cristau jcris...@debian.org wrote: Package: tech-ctte - the debian-installer source package, which builds the installer images for debian's releases, build-depends on syslinux - the release freeze for wheezy started in June 2012, and is now in its final stages - one of the prerequisites for the release is a release candidate for the installer - the syslinux maintainer uploaded new upstream versions of his package to unstable, which were unsuitable for wheezy, in November 2012, and again at the end of January 2013 - the latest of these uploads breaks the installer, [...] Isn't this a rationale for d-i to use the stable builds of syslinux present in testing (or potentially testing-proposed-updates) rather than unstable? It's a build-dependency in the (debian-installer) source package, so will naturally be pulled from whichever suite that package is being built in. I assume it could instead be downloaded from a mirror during the build process, similarly to udebs, but my understanding was that we were trying to reduce the use of such mechanisms within the d-i build, rather than adding more of them. Regards, Adam -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-ctte-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/04032ab1f0c375283034de970b7df...@mail.adsl.funky-badger.org
Bug#699808: tech-ctte: syslinux vs the wheezy release
On 02/06/2013 12:55 AM, Don Armstrong wrote: Is it the intention of the Release Managers not to accept a newer version of syslinux into wheezy? [That is, if the CTTE were to decide to require some fix to d-i, we'd also have to override the RMs?] jftr, i never did nor intended to ask for having syslinux 5 in wheezy. what i care about is having it in unstable (for reasons said earlier). -- Address:Daniel Baumann, Donnerbuehlweg 3, CH-3012 Bern Email: daniel.baum...@progress-technologies.net Internet: http://people.progress-technologies.net/~daniel.baumann/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-ctte-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/511278ef.1030...@progress-technologies.net
Bug#699808: tech-ctte: syslinux vs the wheezy release
On Tue, 05 Feb 2013, Julien Cristau wrote: - the latest of these uploads breaks the installer, making it impossible to build and upload the planned wheezy release candidate, since build-dependencies are fetched from unstable - when asked to revert this change, the syslinux maintainer refused, and said disagreements should be referred to the technical committee Assuming that the patch for #699742[0] fixes this issue with DI RC releases being installed, is there still an outstanding issue for the CTTE? [I can understand a bit of wariness of having d-i built with a version of syslinux that isn't being distributed in wheezy, but I think that might need to be discussed and a technical solution fleshed out elsewhere, and probably isn't ripe for a CTTE decision.] Don Armstrong 0: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=699742#30 1: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=699742#40 -- [Panama, 1989. The U.S. government called it Operation Just Cause.] I think they misspelled this. Shouldn't it be Operation Just 'Cause? -- TekPolitik http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=59669cid=5664907 http://www.donarmstrong.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-ctte-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20130206204100.gd17...@rzlab.ucr.edu
Bug#699808: Bug#699742: syslinux 5.x support
On 06.02.2013 17:48, Michael Biebl wrote: Hi, On 06.02.2013 16:36, Daniel Baumann wrote: On 02/05/2013 09:33 PM, Michael Biebl wrote: I tried this patch against cc123e0 from debian-installer git. Unfortunately the problem is still the same. indeed; only the first part of the patch was attached; here's the complete one. I can confirm that this patch works now. Thanks. I have to correct myself: While the bootloader now does show up (when trying an installation in VBOX), and I no longer get the error message about the missing ldlinux.c32 file, it hangs after selecting the Install option. The screen just stays black. This didn't happen with syslinux 4. Michael -- Why is it that all of the instruments seeking intelligent life in the universe are pointed away from Earth? signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Bug#699808: tech-ctte: syslinux vs the wheezy release
On Wed, 06 Feb 2013, Russ Allbery wrote: Don Armstrong d...@debian.org writes: Assuming that the patch for #699742[0] fixes this issue with DI RC releases being installed, is there still an outstanding issue for the CTTE? Earlier in this thread, there had been a couple of reports that fix didn't work. I haven't looked further, though. Yeah, that was for the first incomplete patch. I was referring to the second one. Don Armstrong -- Let us chat together a moment, my friend. There are still several hours until dawn, and I have the whole day to sleep. -- Count Orlock in _Nosferatu (1922)_ http://www.donarmstrong.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-ctte-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/2013020624.gf17...@rzlab.ucr.edu
Bug#699808: tech-ctte: syslinux vs the wheezy release
Russ Allbery r...@debian.org writes: In practice, at least for the last couple of release cycles, we freeze unstable for non-leaf packages during the release freeze because otherwise it's too difficult with our current infrastructure to finish the release. I personally consider this a regrettable situation, and hope that for jessie and beyond we can work out how to do this better. It is unacceptable to me to freeze anything in sid for more than a week or two at a time. Holding d-i's build dependencies static in unstable for more than half a year is just nuts to me! Sure seems like d-i is something we should build using the components of the release it will be contained in and not unstable... but I haven't tried to think hard about what that might imply that's problematic. And I certainly don't think this is something we should even consider changing at this late date in for wheezy release cycle! Given that, I think it makes sense to, as Daniel mentioned, make it rather explicit that, yes, unstable is frozen for non-leaf packages until we complete the release. And, in this specific case, to revert the syslinux update in unstable (and hopefully upload to experimental) so that we're not building d-i against a package that isn't part of the release. I agree that we need to bring this current situation to closure quickly so that the RC1 build of d-i for wheezy can proceed. We seem to have three options: patch d-i to build successfully against the syslinux in sid wiggle the d-i build processing to fetch syslinux from testing (re-)upload the previous syslinux version with a new epoch The first requires a patch that actually works, and there is at least one assertion that the patch Daniel pointed to does not. The second I can't speak to the complexity of since the last time I looked at d-i was just before the last stable release. The third is easy to accomplish but requires agreement from the maintainer or a TC vote to overrule him. I'm relatively unavailable for the next 24 hours. Hopefully by then further investigation and/or discussion will help make it clear which of the above options we should pursue. Bdale pgpQ89NbWVo7E.pgp Description: PGP signature
Bug#699808: tech-ctte: syslinux vs the wheezy release
Bdale Garbee bd...@gag.com writes: I personally consider this a regrettable situation, and hope that for jessie and beyond we can work out how to do this better. It is unacceptable to me to freeze anything in sid for more than a week or two at a time. Holding d-i's build dependencies static in unstable for more than half a year is just nuts to me! Sure seems like d-i is something we should build using the components of the release it will be contained in and not unstable... but I haven't tried to think hard about what that might imply that's problematic. And I certainly don't think this is something we should even consider changing at this late date in for wheezy release cycle! Yes. This is pretty much exactly how I feel. And I suspect it's a general feeling by a lot of people: we freeze for too long, and we don't like a lot of the implications of that, but we don't know how to do better and get releases out faster because there's a truly intimidating amount of work that has to get done to do the release and all the alternatives seem to make the work even worse. -- Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org) http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-ctte-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87k3qlqdrq@windlord.stanford.edu
Bug#699808: tech-ctte: syslinux vs the wheezy release
On 06.02.2013 23:22, Don Armstrong wrote: On Wed, 06 Feb 2013, Russ Allbery wrote: Don Armstrong d...@debian.org writes: Assuming that the patch for #699742[0] fixes this issue with DI RC releases being installed, is there still an outstanding issue for the CTTE? Earlier in this thread, there had been a couple of reports that fix didn't work. I haven't looked further, though. Yeah, that was for the first incomplete patch. I was referring to the second one. Unfortunately the second patch doesn't work either. See [1]. Cheers, Michael [1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-boot/2013/02/msg00115.html -- Why is it that all of the instruments seeking intelligent life in the universe are pointed away from Earth? signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Bug#699808: tech-ctte: syslinux vs the wheezy release
Bdale Garbee bd...@gag.com (06/02/2013): I personally consider this a regrettable situation, and hope that for jessie and beyond we can work out how to do this better. It is unacceptable to me to freeze anything in sid for more than a week or two at a time. Holding d-i's build dependencies static in unstable for more than half a year is just nuts to me! How is that different from e.g. refraining to upload new libraries to unstable, so that a package needing an upload (say, we need RC bugfixes) doesn't pick new dependencies (on libraries not in testing)? That's how testing works; and it's been this way for years/releases now (since testing replaced frozen, I think). Sure seems like d-i is something we should build using the components of the release it will be contained in and not unstable... Why should that source package be special? Yes, it's cumbersome, it needs many uploads, if only because we need kernel fixes and improvements, along with fixes for its 100+ components. I'm happy to consider improvements to the process when we have time for that, meaning not 8 months into the freeze, but I'd be happy to receive an answer to the above question. And I certainly don't think this is something we should even consider changing at this late date in for wheezy release cycle! I concur. I agree that we need to bring this current situation to closure quickly so that the RC1 build of d-i for wheezy can proceed. We seem to have three options: patch d-i to build successfully against the syslinux in sid And chase all regressions between syslinux 4 and 5? I'd rather not do that, especially given how tested and working patches are failing to deliver. Over the last few months on the d-i front, we've had 1 alpha, 4 betas; we would be throwing away the testing efforts of those 5 releases! wiggle the d-i build processing to fetch syslinux from testing See above question, why should we special-case this build-dependency? (re-)upload the previous syslinux version with a new epoch I don't see a better solution than this one. On a personal note, I'm unsure how we came up with a situation where a single maintainer can *actively* stall a release… Not caring about the release process put into place years ago is a thing. Stopping people from fixing problems created by such carelessness is another one… Mraw, KiBi. signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Bug#699808: tech-ctte: syslinux vs the wheezy release
Cyril Brulebois k...@debian.org writes: Bdale Garbee bd...@gag.com (06/02/2013): I personally consider this a regrettable situation, and hope that for jessie and beyond we can work out how to do this better. It is unacceptable to me to freeze anything in sid for more than a week or two at a time. Holding d-i's build dependencies static in unstable for more than half a year is just nuts to me! How is that different from e.g. refraining to upload new libraries to unstable, so that a package needing an upload (say, we need RC bugfixes) doesn't pick new dependencies (on libraries not in testing)? I personally think it's exactly the same problem. I think the situation with libraries is regrettable as well. (Note that, and I'm guessing I speak for Bdale here too, regrettable is not intended to assign any sort of blame! This is the best solution that we've been able to come up with to date as a project. It's just still has some problems.) That's how testing works; and it's been this way for years/releases now (since testing replaced frozen, I think). Yes. It's always a source of some tension, since there are always people who would prefer to have a place to continue to do development in an unstable context even during the release process. (Cue the standard debate over the usability of experimental for this purpose -- I'm sure nearly everyone reading this can fill it in from memory. *grin*) If we could find a way to release some of that tension, that would be great, but it's a hard problem, and there's no way that we're going to come up with a solution to it right now in the middle of the wheezy freeze. -- Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org) http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-ctte-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87pq0dx6xk@windlord.stanford.edu
Bug#699808: tech-ctte: syslinux vs the wheezy release
On 02/06/2013 11:48 PM, Michael Biebl wrote: Unfortunately the second patch doesn't work either. See [1]. that is incorrect; the patch works, it's just the old vbox version in current debian testing/sid which has a bug (try the image on real hardware or any other virtualization and it works). -- Address:Daniel Baumann, Donnerbuehlweg 3, CH-3012 Bern Email: daniel.baum...@progress-technologies.net Internet: http://people.progress-technologies.net/~daniel.baumann/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-ctte-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/511349f2.4010...@progress-technologies.net
Bug#699808: tech-ctte: syslinux vs the wheezy release
On 07.02.2013 07:30, Daniel Baumann wrote: On 02/06/2013 11:48 PM, Michael Biebl wrote: Unfortunately the second patch doesn't work either. See [1]. that is incorrect; the patch works, it's just the old vbox version in current debian testing/sid which has a bug (try the image on real hardware or any other virtualization and it works). Well, VBOX is pretty popular, so shipping an installer which doesn't work for such an environment is certainly a no-go. Michael -- Why is it that all of the instruments seeking intelligent life in the universe are pointed away from Earth? signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Bug#699808: Bug#699742: Bug#699808: tech-ctte: syslinux vs the wheezy release
On 02/07/2013 07:35 AM, Michael Tokarev wrote: This makes me wonder what other components are also buggy somehow and needs to be updated? first, this is a specific bug in vbox that was fixed some time ago but didn't make it into debian yet (because it lags a significant amount of upstream releases behind; and yes, i should and will fill a bug about it at some later point). How many (old) hardware machines has something similar too? And how much more testing we need to declare that everything we use is compatible? second, if you follow the bug, it's affecting sid and doesn't affect wheezy release images - they will have the same tested and working syslinux version that has proven to be stable during d-i alpha/beta images (unless i'm missing something and d-i *release* images are built with sid packages as well, in which case i personally would consider such a misfeature to be in critical need of a fix (iirc steve puts a local copy of the 'to be used' syslinux version to be used by debian-cd for release images manually on the local fs; not sure about the same that ends up in the final release copy of debian-installer-images, will check later on)). -- Address:Daniel Baumann, Donnerbuehlweg 3, CH-3012 Bern Email: daniel.baum...@progress-technologies.net Internet: http://people.progress-technologies.net/~daniel.baumann/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-ctte-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/51134f1d.3070...@progress-technologies.net
Bug#699808: tech-ctte: syslinux vs the wheezy release
On 07.02.2013 07:58, Daniel Baumann wrote: On 02/07/2013 07:45 AM, Michael Biebl wrote: Well, VBOX is pretty popular, so shipping an installer which doesn't work for such an environment is certainly a no-go. again, the syslinux in sid would not be in wheezy. making it a *temporary* problem until vbox has been fixed in debian (which i'm happy to NMU again, will look to cherry-pick the required patch later today). I think it is obvious by now that reverting to syslinux 4 from wheezy is the only sensible way forward at this point in the release. Michael -- Why is it that all of the instruments seeking intelligent life in the universe are pointed away from Earth? signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Bug#699808: tech-ctte: syslinux vs the wheezy release
On 02/07/2013 07:55 AM, Michael Biebl wrote: I think it is obvious by now that reverting to syslinux 4 from wheezy is the only sensible way forward at this point in the release. 'obvious'? it requires two straight forward things, that, again, as said, are required to be applied for jessie anyway, and are wherey much desired to be applied on the wheezy source (to build images with syslinux backports): * patch applied against debian-installer to include the additionally required .c32 modules when using vesamenu.c32 * patch applied against debian-cd to include the additionally required .c32 modules when using vesamenu.c32 and fixing one temporary breakage in vbox for convenience: * cherry-pick upstream commit to fix a bug in vbox not more, not less. -- Address:Daniel Baumann, Donnerbuehlweg 3, CH-3012 Bern Email: daniel.baum...@progress-technologies.net Internet: http://people.progress-technologies.net/~daniel.baumann/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-ctte-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/51135263.3090...@progress-technologies.net
Bug#699808: tech-ctte: syslinux vs the wheezy release
sorry, forgot to put in the links to the patches.. On 02/07/2013 08:06 AM, Daniel Baumann wrote: * patch applied against debian-installer to include the additionally required .c32 modules when using vesamenu.c32 http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=699742#30 * patch applied against debian-cd to include the additionally required .c32 modules when using vesamenu.c32 http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=699884#20 -- Address:Daniel Baumann, Donnerbuehlweg 3, CH-3012 Bern Email: daniel.baum...@progress-technologies.net Internet: http://people.progress-technologies.net/~daniel.baumann/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-ctte-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/511353a0.3090...@progress-technologies.net
Bug#699808: tech-ctte: syslinux vs the wheezy release
On 07.02.2013 08:06, Daniel Baumann wrote: On 02/07/2013 07:55 AM, Michael Biebl wrote: I think it is obvious by now that reverting to syslinux 4 from wheezy is the only sensible way forward at this point in the release. 'obvious'? Imho, yes. But then, it's not up to me to decide. * patch applied against debian-installer to include the additionally required .c32 modules when using vesamenu.c32 * patch applied against debian-cd to include the additionally required .c32 modules when using vesamenu.c32 * cherry-pick upstream commit to fix a bug in vbox This list is getting longer with each email. Seeing that syslinux 5 has been in sid for less then 10 days, I'm worried what other issues might show up. While I can understand (from personal experience) that freeze-time is sometimes frustrating, delaying the release even further doesn't help anyone. If we want to improve our procedures, how we handle d-i, freeze etc, now is not the time to discuss/work on this. Just my 2¢ Michael -- Why is it that all of the instruments seeking intelligent life in the universe are pointed away from Earth? signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Bug#699808: tech-ctte: syslinux vs the wheezy release
On 02/07/2013 08:12 AM, Michael Biebl wrote: This list is getting longer with each email. Seeing that syslinux 5 has been in sid for less then 10 days, I'm worried what other issues might show up. apart from the two obvious things (debian-installer and debian-cd) that do need to be updated to copy in the additionally required c32 modules when using vesamenu.c32, there's only vbox broken. while i can see that one is inclined to jump to the conclusion that now each and every package in debian needs an update, it really isn't so. no package is directly interacting with a bootloader, except those that create images (debian-installer, debian-cd), or boot images *and* have bugs fixed-upstream-long-time-ago-but-not-in-debian (vbox). again, note that any other virtualization software, be it in wheezy directly (qemu, kvm) or otherwise (parallels, vmware) which i've tested with, has no bugs with syslinux 5. it's an isolated thing that vbox still has that bug in debian. -- Address:Daniel Baumann, Donnerbuehlweg 3, CH-3012 Bern Email: daniel.baum...@progress-technologies.net Internet: http://people.progress-technologies.net/~daniel.baumann/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-ctte-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/5113581b.3020...@progress-technologies.net
