Debian Developers - Are the GRUB packages maintained or orphaned?

Author

Are the GRUB packages maintained or orphaned?

Phil Edwards

2004-04-24, 8:33 pm

I'm running into show-stopper update-grub bugs that were reported, multiple
times, with patches, almost a year ago, but never had any followups or
actions taken as a result. I'm assuming the packages have been orphaned
but don't know how to look up that status.

--
America may be unique in being a country which has leapt
from barbarism to decadence without touching civilization.
- John O'Hara

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sean finney

2004-04-24, 9:33 pm

hi phil,

On Sat, Apr 24, 2004 at 08:15:48PM -0400, Phil Edwards wrote:
>
> I'm running into show-stopper update-grub bugs that were reported, multiple
> times, with patches, almost a year ago, but never had any followups or
> actions taken as a result. I'm assuming the packages have been orphaned
> but don't know how to look up that status.

http://packages.qa.debian.org/grub

should tell you want you want to know.

hth
sean

Jason Thomas

2004-04-24, 10:33 pm

Hi, grub hasn't been orphaned. It is maintained by a group colaboration
on the pkg-grub-devel mailing list. I've had little time to work on grub
lately and all the update-grub stuff has been left upto me.

I attempted to re-write update-grub and when I asked for feed back I got
none.

If you'd like to be involved let me know. The problem with a lot of the
bugs people are complaining about is that when fixed break something
else. Also all the devfs bugs are people screwing up the systems by
mixing devfs and plan /dev. I know it would be great if update-grub/grub
could handle.

Anyway my main point is you can't just go apply the patch that came
with the bug report most of the time there wrong or short sighted.
You'll have to test them throughly and understand them completely.

Now the other problem with bugs in grub itself is I know very little
about the internals of grub and filesystems and things. So these are
just forwarded upstream. This makes me the unnecassary middle man. And I
don't have the time to keep doing that.

So thanks for your interest I hope you have what it takes to get
involved.

On Sat, Apr 24, 2004 at 08:54:12PM -0400, sean finney wrote:
> hi phil,
>
> On Sat, Apr 24, 2004 at 08:15:48PM -0400, Phil Edwards wrote:
>
> http://packages.qa.debian.org/grub
>
> should tell you want you want to know.
>
>
> hth
> sean

--
Jason

"I hope you learn speaking English proper I hope speak I me you."
-- Branden Robinson, 2001

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Phil Edwards

2004-04-26, 3:34 pm

On Sun, Apr 25, 2004 at 12:11:25PM +1000, Jason Thomas wrote:
> Hi, grub hasn't been orphaned. It is maintained by a group colaboration
> on the pkg-grub-devel mailing list. I've had little time to work on grub
> lately and all the update-grub stuff has been left upto me.

Meta-question: the package description page is generated from the text
in the debian/control file. The package's QA page is entirely generated.

Do packages have any "status/whiteboard/notes" pages, where the package
maintainers can make small announcements, like "I'm completely buried
by other work and will not have time to do anything until 2050, when my
clones are supposed to arrive and can take up the slack"?

> I attempted to re-write update-grub and when I asked for feed back I got
> none.
>
> If you'd like to be involved let me know.

I don't dare subscribe to any of the debian-* lists. The spam alone would
swamp my system, and I just can't read that much traffic. Or even skim it.

But I'll certainly test update-grub scripts for you. I keep backups
of menu.lst, after all. As long as you don't add a call to reboot(8)
or fdisk(8) in there, I'll happily try them out. :-)

> Anyway my main point is you can't just go apply the patch that came
> with the bug report most of the time there wrong or short sighted.

Well, okay, but /say so/. A one-line message to the bug's audit trail
would at least let future readers know that 1) the bug is not being ignored,
and 2) the suggested fix has a potential problem.

Look at it from my viewpoint. I'm a scientist, by training and profession.
I judge based only on the evidence, and my experience.

- My /experience/ is that the script is broken.

- There's no /evidence/ in the BTS that anybody cares.

Now, from this email, I've learned that you /do/ care, but I know that
only because I poked and prodded and complained. You could preempt this
kind of situation by simple acknowledgements to bug reports.

> You'll have to test them throughly and understand them completely.

The patch in 211096 works for me. I don't really want to use LABEL=
in my fstab -- as an old-school Unix guy it Just Don't Seem Right --
but there's no other way to boot both 2.4 and 2.6 kernels since 2.6 has
renamed the devices that 2.4 treated as SCSI.

By an amusing coincidence, my sig selector choose...

> "I hope you learn speaking English proper I hope speak I me you."
> -- Branden Robinson, 2001

--
Besides a mathematical inclination, an exceptionally good mastery of
one's native tongue is the most vital asset of a competent programmer.
- Edsger Dijkstra, 1930-2002

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Phil Edwards

2004-04-26, 3:34 pm

Thanks to Sean and Bernd for pointing me to the QA pages!

Phil

--
The two key words tonight are "caution" and "flammable".
- Elvis, _Bubba Ho-Tep_

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Jason Thomas

2004-04-27, 7:33 am

On Mon, Apr 26, 2004 at 02:59:17PM -0400, Phil Edwards wrote:
> On Sun, Apr 25, 2004 at 12:11:25PM +1000, Jason Thomas wrote:
>
> I don't dare subscribe to any of the debian-* lists. The spam alone would
> swamp my system, and I just can't read that much traffic. Or even skim it.

The pkg-grub-devel list is very new and has little spam that I know of.
But I understand.

> But I'll certainly test update-grub scripts for you. I keep backups
> of menu.lst, after all. As long as you don't add a call to reboot(8)
> or fdisk(8) in there, I'll happily try them out. :-)

I've sent a tarball to you seperately.

>
> Well, okay, but /say so/. A one-line message to the bug's audit trail
> would at least let future readers know that 1) the bug is not being ignored,
> and 2) the suggested fix has a potential problem.
>
> Look at it from my viewpoint. I'm a scientist, by training and profession.
> I judge based only on the evidence, and my experience.
>
> - My /experience/ is that the script is broken.
>
> - There's no /evidence/ in the BTS that anybody cares.
>
> Now, from this email, I've learned that you /do/ care, but I know that
> only because I poked and prodded and complained. You could preempt this
> kind of situation by simple acknowledgements to bug reports.

There are a two of us actually, myself and Robert Millan. I'll look at
the bugs soon.

>
> The patch in 211096 works for me. I don't really want to use LABEL=
> in my fstab -- as an old-school Unix guy it Just Don't Seem Right --
> but there's no other way to boot both 2.4 and 2.6 kernels since 2.6 has
> renamed the devices that 2.4 treated as SCSI.

I'll look into it. You could just use 2.6, I have been for a long time
now and it's quite stable.

Thanks for waking me up! Are you going to get involved?

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Phil Edwards

2004-04-30, 7:34 pm

On Tue, Apr 27, 2004 at 09:16:42AM +1000, Jason Thomas wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 26, 2004 at 02:59:17PM -0400, Phil Edwards wrote:
>
>
> I've sent a tarball to you seperately.

I've not received anything yet.

Phil

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