kernel-packages team mailing list archive

[Stefan Bader <stefan.bader@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

So this turns out to offer many twists and turns. Looking closer at a
kernel installation which caused FTBS reports from DKMS, I found that
the apt installer is unpacking all packages before calling the post
install hooks. So all checking for existing headers that the postinst
hook script does is succeeding as the files are already there.

>From what I saw it looked like the DKMS autobuild was attempted 3 times.
Once for kernel-image and another one for kernel-image-extra, both of
those failed. Then another one for headers which looked to be
successful. After that I checked the hooks and found that we
(Debian/Ubuntu) seem to have two places. The kernel postinst hook, but
also one exclusively for the headers. So it seemed reasonable to reduce
this to one hook. After all building external modules only makes sense
after the headers are configured.

The attached patch would do this and also fix up the hook to do what we
think was intended. *However*, this actually was not our real problem.
The _REAL_ problem is the ingenious cross-module action (I have an itch
to call it evil layer violation) which the nvidia driver is causing
(Alberto, is this your work?). Doing a complete run of DKMS
autoinstallation seems to have a certain chance to always fail on the
first attempt. I *should* have been suspicious after nvidia seemed to be
the only one affected by FTBS reports which had everything installed
after all. Really I am not entirely sure any DKMS module ever should
meddle in another modules build directory like nvidia-uvm does. >:-(

Bottom line: The changes to the DKMS package that I attached might be
nice improvements, but not necessarily worth backporting. The real fix
very likely has to be made to the nvidia DKMS build procedure.

** Patch added: "DKMS changes"
   https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/dkms/+bug/1427175/+attachment/4343170/+files/dkms.debdiff

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1427175

Title:
  dkms postinst should handle missing headers

Status in dkms package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  In the kernel post-install script of DKMS we have the following:

  if [ -x /usr/lib/dkms/dkms_autoinstaller ]; then
      exec /usr/lib/dkms/dkms_autoinstaller start $inst_kern > /dev/null
  fi

  if ! _check_kernel_dir $inst_kern ; then
      echo "dkms: WARNING: $kernel headers are missing, which may explain the above failures." >&2
      echo "      please install the $header_pkg package to fix this." >&2
  fi

  Supposedly the intention is to produce a warning if the kernel-headers
  are missing (might also cause the overall exit code to be 0). But
  execution of this script stops and is replaced by the
  dkms_autoinstaller when using exec. So it probably should be:

  if [ -x /usr/lib/dkms/dkms_autoinstaller ]; then
    if ! /usr/lib/dkms/dkms_autoinstaller start $inst_kern > /dev/null; then
      if !_check_kernel_dir $inst_kern ; then
     ...

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