ANNOUNCE: dkms 2.0.17

[Matt Domsch]

On Fri, Jul 13, 2007 at 11:12:48AM -0500, Matt Domsch wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 13, 2007 at 11:06:42AM +0200, Brinkman, Alexander wrote:
> > 
> > It would seem that the new Ubuntu stuff that was introduced still has a
> > little bug in it. Or better said: probably DKMS is ok, but the hook
> > mechanism is not working correctly anymore.
> > 
> > With DKMS 2.0.17 the file /etc/kernel-img.conf now reads:
> > do_symlinks = yes
> > relative_links = yes
> > do_bootloader = no
> > do_bootfloppy = no
> > do_initrd = yes
> > link_in_boot = no
> > postinst_hook = /sbin/update-grub
> > postrm_hook   = /sbin/update-grub
> > header_postinst_hook = /etc/kernel/postinst.d/dkms
> > 
> > When this last line is in the config file the previous lines are not
> > called anymore (the postinst and postrm hooks). So update-grub is not
> > executed anymore on a kernel update (or remove), which is not good.
> > 
> > It can fairly easily be fixed by adding a link in the
> > /etc/kernel/postinst.d directory to /sbin/update-grub.
> > 
> > But I'm not really sure why the hooks in the config file are not used
> > anymore. Perhaps because the /etc/kernel/* directories were empty
> > before, and now there's a dkms script in them (which would maybe
> > overrule the postinst/postrm_hook entries in the config file?). However,
> > when removing the last line from the kernel-img.conf file, update-grub
> > is again called upon installation of a new kernel... very confusing...
> 
> Doh.  See this in /var/lib/dpkg/info/linux-image-2.6.20-16-generic.postinst:
> 
>       $postinst_hook   = "$1"  if /postinst_hook\s*=\s*(\S+)/ig;
> 
> Notice the test.  It's matching postinst_hook  on the
> header_postinst_hook line from the /etc/kernel-img.conf file, so it's
> overriding the call to update-grub with another call to dkms.
> 
> That is a bug in the linux-image scripts.  Will file as such.
> 
> I guess that also means we can't rely on that to hook in DKMS for a
> while... :-(  And we'll have to respin DKMS to remove that...

Please note that this week Tim Gardner of Ubuntu has committed code to
kernel-package to address this in the next kernel release for Feisty
and newer.  2.6.20-16 is still the present kABI, so this should fix it
for upgrades to any future kABI.  Thanks to Mike Morgan for submitting
the patch to Ubuntu.

Thanks,
Matt

-- 
Matt Domsch
Linux Technology Strategist, Dell Office of the CTO
linux.dell.com & www.dell.com/linux