Cannot install packages that require initrd re-generation on touch devices without proper flash-kernel support and kernel package

[Max Brustkern]

I reported a bug regarding inability to install bootchart on a specific device. This report removes the private details.

When I try to install bootchart on a krillin, I get this:
phablet@ubuntu-phablet:~$ sudo apt-get install bootchart
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
bootchart is already the newest version.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
1 not fully installed or removed.
After this operation, 0 B of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y
Setting up bootchart (0.90.2-8ubuntu2) ...
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-touch
dpkg: warning: version 'touch' has bad syntax: version number does not start with digit
grep: /boot/config-touch: No such file or directory
WARNING: missing /lib/modules/touch
Device driver support needs thus be built-in linux image!
depmod: FATAL: touch: not absolute path.
depmod: ERROR: could not open directory /tmp/mkinitramfs_lMBWKy/lib/modules/3.4.67: No such file or directory
depmod: FATAL: could not search modules: No such file or directory
E: No boot partition found !
run-parts: /etc/initramfs/post-update.d//zz-flash-touch-initrd exited with return code 1
dpkg: error processing package bootchart (--configure):
 subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
 bootchart
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

[Oliver Grawert (ogra)]

the issue here is that bootchart asks for initrd re-generation during package install, but krillin has neither a supported kernel package nor any support in flash-kernel to install the same (which would be a requirement for a kernel package)

what we can do here, since the initrd bootchart collection does not seem to work with android kernels anyway is to export FLASH_KERNEL_SKIP=true before installing it, to simply ignore the flashing of the intrd ... phablet-bootchart will also take this into account in the next iteration ... if you dont use phablet-bootchart (like agreed for testing during trusty timeframe when phablet-bootchart was developed with CI to cover this test case), please make sure your installation script does run this export before apt install the package.

[Oliver Grawert (ogra)]

nothing we can do about this in bootchart itself, marking invalid
fix/workaround is developed in phablet-bootchart, adding phablet-tools task

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package phablet-tools - 1.1+15.04.20141107.1-0ubuntu1

---------------
phablet-tools (1.1+15.04.20141107.1-0ubuntu1) vivid; urgency=low

  [ Ubuntu daily release ]
  * New rebuild forced

  [ Oliver Grawert ]
  * update phablet-bootchart for new developer mode and password
    handling (LP: #1384450) (LP: #1384450)

  [ Robert Bruce Park ]
  * Fix pep8 test causing trunk build failures.
 -- Ubuntu daily release <email address hidden> Fri, 07 Nov 2014 16:15:45 +0000