buildd images contain broken update-initramfs script

[Colin Watson]

https://launchpadlibrarian.net/439022047/buildlog_ubuntu-eoan-amd64.diffoscope_121_BUILDING.txt.gz fails with:

  Setting up linux-firmware (1.181) ...
  /usr/sbin/update-initramfs: 3: exec: update-initramfs.REAL: not found
  dpkg: error processing package linux-firmware (--configure):
   installed linux-firmware package post-installation script subprocess returned error exit status 127

This is a bug in the buildd images: they don't contain initramfs-tools at all, so while the chroot configuration stage creates an update-initramfs diversion, the deconfiguration stage sees that update-initramfs.REAL doesn't exist and so never removes the diversion or the temporary replacement script.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package livecd-rootfs - 2.606

---------------
livecd-rootfs (2.606) eoan; urgency=medium

  * Undivert update-initramfs more carefully: previously the wrapper script
    and diversion were left in place on images such as buildd images that
    don't have initramfs-tools installed (LP: #1841573).

 -- Colin Watson <email address hidden> Tue, 27 Aug 2019 17:05:32 +0100

[Mattia Rizzolo (mapreri)]

Was this deployed? We still see the same error today in a new build of diffoscope.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

Not yet, but I haven't forgotten about it: I'm waiting until I can chase somebody up about the weird i386 failure on https://launchpad.net/~cloud-images/+livefs/ubuntu/eoan/cpc-buildd.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

The same problem affects xenial and bionic; we haven't switched over to those images yet, but we plan to, so we should fix this first.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

Actually, now that I look more closely it doesn't affect xenial or bionic after all. The regression was introduced in commit 283871573db33af8bb1a77d452d17ac6e18ef9e2 which was part of livecd-rootfs 2.559, which is newer than bionic. If we ever plan to use the new-style base images for disco then this would be a problem there, but we probably don't.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

I've upgraded eoan's chroots, and diffoscope now builds fine.