Bug#1018873: live-build --firmware-chroot option is broken due to nvidia-tesla{-470, }-kernel-support

[Raphael Hertzog]

Package: nvidia-tesla-kernel-support
Version: 510.85.02-1
Severity: important
User: devel at kali.org
Usertags: origin-kali
X-Debbugs-Cc: raphael at offensive-security.com, Andreas Beckmann <anbe at debian.org>, sophie at offensive-security.com
Control: affects -1 live-build

Hello,

if you run live-build with non-free enabled and with "--firmware-chroot true"
then you will get this failure:

----
[2022-09-01 03:02:53] lb chroot_install-packages install
P: Begin installing packages (install pass)...
Reading package lists...
Building dependency tree...
Reading state information...
util-linux-extra is already the newest version (2.38.1-1).
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 nvidia-tesla-kernel-support : Depends: nvidia-tesla-alternative (= 510.85.02-1) but it is not installable
                               Depends: nvidia-tesla-alternative--kmod-alias
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.
----

The issue is that "lb chroot_firmware" identifies all the firmware packages
by the fact that they provide files in /lib/firmware/ and as such it
identifies nvidia-tesla-470-kernel-support and nvidia-tesla-kernel-support
and adds both to the list of packages to install.

You will get the exact same error as above with:
# apt install nvidia-tesla-470-kernel-support nvidia-tesla-kernel-support

So both packages are not co-installable, the packages themselves should be
co-installable, but some of the dependencies aren't in particular
nvidia-tesla-470-alternative and nvidia-tesla-alternative:
# apt install nvidia-tesla-470-alternative nvidia-tesla-alternative
[...]
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 nvidia-tesla-470-alternative : Breaks: nvidia-tesla-alternative (> 0) but 510.85.02-1 is to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.


I'm not sure what's the best way forward. It seems to me that live-build
is doing the right thing by trying to include as many firmware as possible
but at the same time it should likely also be able to exclude a firmware
package that is not installable. But checking installability is a
significant penalty and complexity.

So I would certainly prefer if the nvidia packages providing firmwares
could be co-installable. If that's really not possible, then it would be
nice to add some sort of flag to mark the firmware package that should not
be installed by default.

Would it be possible for example to move nvidia-tesla-470-alternative and
nvidia-tesla-alternative into Recommends instead of Depends ?

Or move the firmware files to some common package without the problematic
dependencies?

Thank you for looking into this issue.

-- Package-specific info:

-- System Information:
Debian Release: bookworm/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 5.18.0-3-amd64 (SMP w/16 CPU threads; PREEMPT)
Kernel taint flags: TAINT_WARN
Locale: LANG=fr_FR.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=fr_FR.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE not set
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /usr/bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
LSM: AppArmor: enabled

Versions of packages live-build depends on:
ii  debootstrap  1.0.127

Versions of packages live-build recommends:
ii  apt-utils                       2.5.2
ii  bzip2                           1.0.8-5
ii  cpio                            2.13+dfsg-7
ii  cryptsetup                      2:2.5.0-2
ii  file                            1:5.41-4
ii  live-boot-doc                   1:20220505
ii  live-config-doc                 11.0.3
ii  live-manual-html [live-manual]  2:20151217.2
ii  rsync                           3.2.5-1
ii  systemd-container               251.4-1
ii  wget                            1.21.3-1+b2
ii  xz-utils                        5.2.5-2.1

Versions of packages live-build suggests:
ii  e2fsprogs  1.46.5-2
ii  mtd-utils  1:2.1.4-1+b1
ii  parted     3.5-1

-- no debconf information

-- 
Raphaël Hertzog