Kernel dependency issues

[Michael Schwendt]

On Thu, 11 Dec 2008 21:08:46 -0500, Christopher wrote:

> After a "yum update --skip-broken", I now have the following
> kernel-related packages installed:

How did you create this list? The main kernel packages are missing!

> kernel-debug-2.6.27.5-117.fc10.x86_64
> kernel-debug-debuginfo-2.6.27.5-117.fc10.x86_64

These two packages have disappeared in the newer build:
http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/buildinfo?buildID=73968
(old: http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/buildinfo?buildID=70131 )

Could be that these sub-packages are obsolete but have not been obsoleted
anywhere. It's a common mistake package maintainers do, especially since
there is no Fedora policy on strict "Obsoletes". That leads to broken
dependencies during updates.

> kernel-debuginfo-2.6.27.5-117.fc10.x86_64
> kernel-debuginfo-common-2.6.27.5-117.fc10.x86_64
> kernel-firmware-2.6.28-0.121.rc7.git5.fc11.noarch
> kernel-headers-2.6.28-0.121.rc7.git5.fc11.x86_64
> 
> 1.) Note that kernel-firmware and kernel-headers are out of sync with
> the other packages.  Should this be allowed by the dependency checker?

Yes, I think so. If the dependencies are lax, a broad range of
package release is sufficient. The kernel requires a pretty strict
version of kernel-firmware, and glibc-headers only requires sufficient
kernel-headers to be installed.

> 2.) From their descriptions, it looks like kernel-headers and
> glibc-headers are only needed if you are compiling code.  Are they safe
> to remove if I know I don't do that sort of thing?  If so, shouldn't
> they have "-devel" in the name?  I remove all -devel packages to keep my
> system clean.

Decide yourself based on the package description.

I'm surprised one can "rpm -e glibc-headers" while keeping glibc-devel
That looks a bit strange.