Stop idiots like me from installing this package on non-embedded systems

[Martin Burchell]

Stupidly I installed this package on a regular non-embedded Ubuntu 20.04 installation on a laptop, possibly as a result of a wildcard install initramfs-tools-*.

This made my installation completely unusable. Booting from any kernel resulted in the error "The required kernel commandline snap_core is not set". I spent several days installing Ubuntu and restoring packages and files from backup and trying to repair my boot partition until I realised what the problem was. https://askubuntu.com/questions/1390286/ubuntu-20-04-wont-boot-following-package-install-snap-problem/1390885#1390885

For now, I've used apt-mark hold to stop this being installed. Is there any way we can stop idiots like me from doing this again in the future?

To me, a package called "foo-ubuntu-core" sounds like something fundamental to an Ubuntu installation, not specific to an embedded system.

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

Well, for releases after Ubuntu 20.04, this is effectively fixed by virtue of the fact that this is no longer in the archive.

And package names are an interface, so we can't exactly change the package name.

I would hope that, at least, you have also learned not to install random packages from the archive just because the package name suggests you THINK it should be installed on your system but wasn't.

[Martin Burchell (martinburchell)]

Good to hear. Thanks!