Please review package naming and source hints

The Ubuntu Kernel Team is planning to move to the 2.6.27 kernel for the upcoming Intrepid Ibex 8.10 release. As a result, the kernel team would appreciate it if you could please test this newer 2.6.27 Ubuntu kernel. There are one of two ways you should be able to test:

1) If you are comfortable installing packages on your own, the linux-image-2.6.27-* package is currently available for you to install and test.

--or--

2) The upcoming Alpha5 for Intrepid Ibex 8.10 will contain this newer 2.6.27 Ubuntu kernel. Alpha5 is set to be released Thursday Sept 4. Please watch http://www.ubuntu.com/testing for Alpha5 to be announced. You should then be able to test via a LiveCD.

Please let us know immediately if this newer 2.6.27 kernel resolves the bug reported here or if the issue remains. More importantly, please open a new bug report for each new bug/regression introduced by the 2.6.27 kernel and tag the bug report with 'linux-2.6.27'. Also, please specifically note if the issue does or does not appear in the 2.6.26 kernel. Thanks again, we really appreicate your help and feedback.

All of the issues mentioned above still apply for either 2.6.26 or 2.6.27. It is also worth mentioning that these packages build-depend on debhelper (>=3) yet either have DH_COMPAT or debian/compat set to 4, which is additionally bad: they really ought build-depend on a version of debhelper capable of building the package.

Separately from that, these are all packaging issues: the actual kernel source used doesn't matter in resolving these bugs.

Per a decision made by the Ubuntu Kernel Team, bugs will longer be assigned to the ubuntu-kernel-team in Launchpad as part of the bug triage process. The ubuntu-kernel-team is being unassigned from this bug report. Refer to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelTeamBugPolicies for more information. Thanks.

This bug was reported a while ago but there hasn't been any recent comments or updates. Is this still an issue with the latest pre-release of Jaunty 9.04? Refer to http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/jaunty/beta . Please let us know.

As you might have seen had you tried to replicate the listed issues, the third is resolved, and the first two remain. These can be trivially investigated with `apt-cache show linux`, `apt-cache show linux-generic`, and `apt-get --simulate source linux`. I still suspect there are other things that would benefit from review, but the two described are clearly directly confusing to users.

On reading what I've written, I apologize for being snippy. I do understand that this is a difficult issue, in large part because of the requirement to support upgrades from one release to another.

Addressing the first described issue requires some useful differentiation between "linux" and "linux-generic", which wouldn't make sense as they depend on precisely the same set of packages. Dropping either would probably break upgrades for some people. That said, it's still hard for a user to determine which is the correct package to install from a package manager.

Addressing the second described issue is made more difficult because of the nature of naming for source and binary packages. Because of the existence of the binary "linux" meta-package, sensibly stored in linux-meta, the package management software grabs the associated source for the selected binary package.

Both could be addressed by dropping the "linux" binary meta-package from the linux-meta source, although this would cause upgrade issues for users with "linux" installed, and not "linux-generic". It may be possible to work around this with a quirk in update-manager, although it is probably only safe to do so by introducing such a change early in the release cycle to ensure adequate testing.

This bug report was marked as Triaged a while ago but has not had any updated comments for quite some time. Please let us know if this issue remains in the current Ubuntu release, http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download . If the issue remains, click on the current status under the Status column and change the status back to "New". Thanks.

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This bug remains, in all respects. I tend to discuss it with various members of the kernel team 4-5 times a year. Solving it is tricky, but it will be clear when it is fixed, and a day for celegration. It affects no paritcular kernel version, but happens to affect all the kernels in dapper, hardy, intrepid, jaunty, karmic, and lucid. I belive it was introduced in Hoary or Breezy, and is a regression from Warty, but my memory is sufficiently hazy on the matter that I don't think it deserves the tag (plus creating this bug solved *heaps* of other bugs, which is a good thing).