[Pkg-sysvinit-devel] (fwd) make tar*-pkg considered dangerous

[Henrique de Moraes Holschuh]

I am forwarding this as a remider that, should we ever get to the point of
moving around /lib or /usr/lib, /sbin or /usr/sbin, and /bin or /usr/sbin,
as well as any other such trunks, we really ought to consider whether we
should be using symlinks or bind mounts [where possible] for such moves.

Also, just in case, Debian users are gently reminded that there are less
unsavory methods of packing custom kernel builds for later use in Debian
boxes, including the Linux upstream "deb-pkg" make target (dpkg is a lot
smarter than "tar"), and the make-kpkg command provided by the
kernel-package Debian package (which IMHO tends to produce better kernel
.deb packages than the upstream "deb-pkg" make target.

----- Forwarded message from Andi Kleen <andi at firstfloor.org> -----
Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2012 05:16:46 +0200
From: Andi Kleen <andi at firstfloor.org>
To: linux-kernel at vger.kernel.org, linux-kbuild at vger.kernel.org
Subject: make tar*-pkg considered dangerous

Hi,

We've had some incidents with people destroying Fedore 17 installs
(to the point of reinstall) by installing a kernel tarball generated with 
make tar*-pkg

The problem is that the tarball includes /lib/{modules,firmware},
but on FC17 /lib is a symlink. tar when it unpacks the tarball
replaces the symlink with the directory. So they end up
with a /lib which only contains the new kernel files, but nothing else,

And then the system doesn't boot anymore.

I'm not sure there is a good fix for this. I don't know of a way to
convince tar to not do that. And putting everything into /usr 
would be very incompatible.

Disable these make targets or add warnings?  If disabling people should
use rpms or dpkgs instead?

-Andi

-- 
ak at linux.intel.com -- Speaking for myself only.

----- End forwarded message -----

-- 
  "One disk to rule them all, One disk to find them. One disk to bring
  them all and in the darkness grind them. In the Land of Redmond
  where the shadows lie." -- The Silicon Valley Tarot
  Henrique Holschuh