Bug 781617 – Portage module-rebuild set wrongly records gentoo-kernel as an external kmod

• Product: Portage Development
• Status: RESOLVED FIXED

[Description Dave Hughes 2021-04-09 02:56:17 UTC]

As per title.

Portage currently constructs the module-rebuild package set via packages which own files in /lib/modules.

This results in the scenario where sys-kernel/gentoo-kernel (or other similar type packages) are wrongly recorded as external modules in the module-rebuild set because the package owns files in the /lib/modules directory.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.emerge sys-kernel/gentoo-kernel
2.emerge --ask @module-rebuild 
3.emerge output will show sys-kernel/gentoo-kernel alongside any other external kmods e.g. zfs-kmod, nvidia etc
Actual Results:  
sys-kernel/gentoo-kernel wrongly recorded as external kernel module.

Expected Results:  
sys-kernel/gentoo-kernel should not be recorded as an external kernel module.

I changed (locally) the module-rebuild package set logic to construct itself via inheritance of linux-mod.eclass as opposed to ownership of files in /lib/modules.

However there is the small issue of the following packages which inherit linux-mod.eclass, but only conditionally build external kernel modules.

- net-dialup/accel-ppp
- net-firewall/ipset
- net-fs/openafs
- net-misc/openvswitch
- app-crypt/tpm-emulator
- net-firewall/xtables-addons

I spoke with Zac on irc about the possibility of staying with the ownership based logic and adding 'exclude-files=/usr/src' to the module-rebuild set which works nicely, other than the small problem of zfs + spl being installed in that directory. As a result I tried 'exclude-files=/usr/src/linux*' which would hopefully exclude all kernel packages from the ownership logic while allowing zfs to be recorded in the module-rebuild set, but unfortunately exclude-files does not currently accept globs which means this doesn't work.

Another approach that Zac proposed would be via 'PROPERTIES="kernel-module"'. As far as I'm aware this would require modifying all the ebuilds individually, unless it is added to the linux-mod.eclass phases as opposed to the class itself (as some ~6 packages inherit linux-mod.eclass but only build kernel modules if USE=foo).

[Comment 1 Zac Medico 2021-04-09 03:00:32 UTC]

We could also do something like RESTRICT=module-rebuild.

[Comment 2 Ionen Wolkens 2021-04-09 03:32:44 UTC]

Had bug #757654 too

[Comment 3 Zac Medico 2021-04-09 03:39:44 UTC]

A possibility is to extend OwnerSet with behavior like VariableSet, so we can exclude owners based on RESTRICT.

[Comment 4 Zac Medico 2021-04-09 03:41:09 UTC]

Bug 757654 comment 2 is a possibility, though we may need to add glob support to the exclude-files parameter.

[Comment 5 Zac Medico 2021-04-09 03:45:41 UTC]

We can add exclude-files glob support similar to this:

https://gitweb.gentoo.org/proj/portage.git/commit/?id=b1342ac2c83b4a1b0415eb5fcc4dd1d6c65561d8

[Comment 6 Dave Hughes 2021-04-16 13:26:37 UTC]

Fix has been submitted to Portage https://github.com/gentoo/portage/pull/694

[Comment 7 Dave Hughes 2021-06-21 19:37:29 UTC]

PR was merged into Portage 3.0.19.