Package: udev
Version: 146-5
udev 146-5 was installed as a result of dependencies while I was
upgrading my computer. I happened to be in the process of installing a
new kernel that had inotify support, but I was at the moment running a
kernel without inotify support. The udev preinstall script complained
that inotify was not supported and would not proceed, even with dpkg
--force-all. Due to the aborted upgrade and dependency mess, apt was in
an unusable state until I cleared this hurdle, so it needed to be
resolved prior to rebooting into the new kernel!
Older versions of udev would complain on startup about missing inotify
support, but would (mostly) function. This is the correct behavior, as
inotify is not essential for udev to function in a basic fashion, but
basic functioning of udev _is_ essential for a modern linux computer to
boot. If the underlying udev program is no longer capable of this
behavior, then this problem should probably be reported upstream. (sorry
I have not bothered to boot the new udev with the old kernel to test this
condition)
But in the meantime, the hurdle in preinstall is a real nuissance. It
happens to skip the check if something like /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade is
present, because of exactly this scenario. This works for people who use
debian-provided kernels (presumably), but whatever mechanism produced
this file did not work with my ad hoc kernel upgrade process (I cannot
stand prepackaged kernels, personally).
So I think the ideal short-term fix would be one of two possibilities:
* the preinstall script could notify the user of the possibility of
creating this /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade file, so they can override the
test without taking apart the control.tar.gz
* the preinstall script could query the user at this point to ask if
they want to override this dependency, with appropriate warnings.
I think the latter fix is preferable.
Thanks!
- Greg
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