Bug#1079329: closed by Debian FTP Masters <ftpmaster at ftp-master.debian.org> (reply to Luca Boccassi <bluca at debian.org>) (Bug#1079329: fixed in systemd 257.4-6)

[Helmut Grohne]

Control: reopen -1

On Sat, Mar 29, 2025 at 01:39:02AM +0000, Debian Bug Tracking System wrote:
> It has been closed by Debian FTP Masters <ftpmaster at ftp-master.debian.org> (reply to Luca Boccassi <bluca at debian.org>).

I'm saddened that rather than addressing the root cause, you declare 
incompatibility with other components that happen to expose the faulty 
behavior.

The actual problem resides in systemctl switch-root (or rather the 
implementation of the resulting ipc request). dracut is just one 
initramfs generator that happens to employ this functionality, but it is 
not the package causing the problem. I argue that your declared conflict 
is misdirected.

We may easily reproduce the issue using mkosi. In order to make the 
exercise simple to reproduce locally, I demonstrate it inside a minimal 
virtual machine created using debvm.

    debvm-create -z 10G -- --architecture=arm64 --include=mkosi,firmware-linux-free
    debvm-run

Note that mkosi-initrd is unhappy if /usr/lib/firmware does not exist 
and hence I add firmware-linux-free to populate it with something. That 
minor issue may be worth fixing in mkosi as well.

Once booted, we may use mkosi to create a new initrd.

    mkosi-initrd -O /boot/ -o initrd.img-$(uname -r)

Since debvm cannot notice initrd updates, the machine must be powered 
off and started again rather than rebooted to experience the problem. 
Once booted, /lib64 points to usr/lib.

I am reproducing the problem with mkosi now, but again it is not mkosi 
which is at fault here. I ask you to refrain from declaring a conflict 
with it as well.

Helmut