Subject: Re: [devuan-dev] bug#916: /usr/share/initramfs-tools/hooks/kmod broken on armhf for kernels with CONFIG_MODULE_DECOMPRESS

From: Mark Hindley <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 22 Oct 2025 13:49:07 +0100

Control: tags -1 debian

David,

Thanks for this.

On Wed, Oct 22, 2025 at 12:29:47PM +0000, David Kuehling wrote:
> on armhf, the initramfs-hook of kmod fails intermittently, when the
> kernel is compiled with CONFIG_MODULE_DECOMPRESS.  This prevents
> update-initramfs from creating any initrd images.
> 
> The failure is triggered by these lines:
> 
>           copy_exec /usr/lib/*-linux-gnu/liblzma.so.5
>           copy_exec /usr/lib/*-linux-gnu/libzstd.so.1

The comment above those lines[1] suggest this is for CONFIG_MODULE_DECOMPRESS=n?

> There is no /usr/lib/*-linux-gnu directory on armhf!  The directory is
> named /usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf here.  Likely other Debian
> architectures are affected by the same bug.

As you notice, kmod is not forked in Devuan and we use Debian's packages
directly without recompilation.

The src:kmod d/changelog[2] suggests this code was added to fix Debian
#1099801. Perhaps the fix is wrong or incomplete.

Please report to Debian's BTS for resolution. The reportbug(1) --bts=debian
option might be useful.

Thanks

Mark

[1]  https://salsa.debian.org/md/kmod/-/blob/master/debian/kmod.initramfs-hook?ref_type=heads#L23

[2]  https://tracker.debian.org/media/packages/k/kmod/changelog-34.2-2