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Possible dependency bug with sparky-grub-theme

Started by klappnase, June 07, 2017, 06:42:23 PM

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klappnase

Hello,
I am not sure if this is the right place to report this (apologies if it is not), but I figured that reportbug is probably debian-only and could not find something else.
I think I encountered a bug in the dependencies of the current version 0.1.3 of the sparky-grub-theme package.
This occured on a cheap laptop of mine, one of those strange devices that are 64bit but with a 32bit UEFI.
I have the 64bit version of sparky installed and to be able to boot this machine I manually installed grub-efi-ia32 and grub-efi-ia32-bin.
Now the upgrade to sparky-grub-theme wants to remove grub-efi-ia32 and install grub-pc instead, which is obviously no good with that device:
# apt-get -s dist-upgrade
(...)
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  grub-efi-ia32
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  grub-pc grub-pc-bin (...)

Apparently this happens because of the new dependencies in sparky-grub-theme, as the output of apt-cache showpkg reveals (still 0.1.1 installed here):
# apt-cache showpkg sparky-grub-theme
(...)
Dependencies:
0.1.3 - sparky-artwork (0 (null)) grub-pc (16 (null)) grub-efi (0 (null))
0.1.1 - sparky-artwork (0 (null))

Installing grub-efi instead of grub-pc unfortunately is no option here either, because this would install the amd64 version of grub-efi, which no doubt is also no good with that machine.
Not sure how this could be resolved properly, maybe adding "grub-efi-ia32 | grub-efi-amd64" instead of the grub-efi meta-package as alternatives to grub-pc in sparky-grub-theme's dependencies could help.
It is certainly not a big issue, it looks like I can simply put sparky-grub-theme on hold to avoid this trouble, on the other hand it seems rather serious, since users who install their upgrades incautiously on such a device might probably end up with an unbootable machine.

Best regards

Michael

pavroo

Hi Michael
Usually bugs could be reported to our account at sourceforge, but never mind.

Anyway, it is not a bug.
The 'sparky-grub-theme' has only 'sparky-artwork' as a dependency, rest of them is recommended only.
So, using Sparky's "Upgrade System" tool lets you avoid such problems.

Doing upgrade manually, simply run:
apt update
apt full-upgrade --no-install-recommends
Nothing is easy as it looks. Danielle Steel
Join #sparkylinux.org at [url="//irc.libera.chat"]irc.libera.chat[/url]

klappnase

Hi pavroo,
thanks for the quick response!
QuoteUsually bugs could be reported to our account at sourceforge, but never mind.
Thanks, I will keep this in mind in case anything else shows up :)
QuoteThe 'sparky-grub-theme' has only 'sparky-artwork' as a dependency, rest of them is recommended only.
Oh, you are right (of course), I had overlooked this.
QuoteSo, using Sparky's "Upgrade System" tool lets you avoid such problems.
Ah ok, I didn't know that, in fact I do not use aptus, but just do "apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade".
Now I changed the setting of APT::Install-Recommends to "0" in /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/ and the problem disappeared.

However, I still feel that it is odd that with default settings for apt simply doing "apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade" will try
to remove a probably vital package as grub-efi-ia32 (although I admit that I am not really sure that this will render the system unbootable,
since grub-efi-ia32-bin apparently would not have been removed, but I was too lazy to try it out).
Stopping apt from installing the Recommends rather feels like a workaround, although admittedly a much better one
than putting the package on hold as I did first :)

But anyway, please don't misunderstand me, I don't want to be nitpicking, just thinking out aloud :)
Sparky is a very nice distro, I really like it, thanks for all the time and work you invest!

Best regards

Michael


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