Bug 920296 – app-admin/eclean-kernel-2.99.7 fails tests on big-endian: ecleankernel.file.UnrecognizedKernelError: Kernel file ... terminates before expected version string position (4608)

• Status: CONFIRMED
• Product: Gentoo Linux

[Description matoro 2023-12-19 01:02:02 UTC]

emerge --info and build.log in attachment.  This reproduces on sparc and ppc64 BE, but not on ppc64 LE, so I'm extrapolating it as big-endian issue.

Reproducible: Always

[Comment 1 matoro 2023-12-19 01:03:23 UTC]

Created attachment 879887 [details]
build.log and emerge --info from ppc64 BE

[Comment 2 matoro 2023-12-19 01:04:06 UTC]

Created attachment 879888 [details]
build.log and emerge --info from sparc

[Comment 3 Michał Górny 2023-12-19 16:23:03 UTC]

Hmm, I suppose bzImage format is specific to LE platforms, so I guess I can just force LE there.

[Comment 4 Michał Górny 2023-12-19 17:10:49 UTC]

Andrew, could you advise here?  I suppose you know more about kernels than I do.

[Comment 5 Nowa Ammerlaan 2023-12-19 18:03:45 UTC]

(In reply to Michał Górny from comment #4)
> Andrew, could you advise here?  I suppose you know more about kernels than I
> do.

I have not yet dug very deeply into this, but my first guess is that we might be able to fix this issue by switching around self.read_version_from_bzimage and self.read_version_from_raw in the for loop on line 160 of file.py. I.e try the raw image method before we try the bzimage method. Or otherwise ensure that we catch any error from read_version_from_bzimage non-fatally so we can then try the next method.

Took a quick look through the kernel make files, and it does look like it is possible to make a zImage (not bzImage) instead of the standard vmlinux that we use on these arches for the dist-kernels. So maybe we don't want a 'if endianness == big; then return' in self.read_version_from_bzimage.