OpenJDK and unremoved directories
by Vitaly Zaitsev
Hello.
I have a lot of unremoved directories and files in /usr/lib/jvm/:
$ ls -l /usr/lib/jvm/
total 140
drwxr-xr-x. 5 root root 4096 Sep 10 14:32
java-11-openjdk-11.0.12.0.7-4.fc34.x86_64
drwxr-xr-x. 3 root root 4096 Mar 14 2017
java-1.8.0-openjdk-1.8.0.121-10.b14.fc25.x86_64
drwxr-xr-x. 3 root root 4096 Apr 21 2017
java-1.8.0-openjdk-1.8.0.131-1.b12.fc25.x86_64
drwxr-xr-x. 3 root root 4096 Oct 25 2017
java-1.8.0-openjdk-1.8.0.151-1.b12.fc26.x86_64
drwxr-xr-x. 3 root root 4096 Oct 25 2017
java-1.8.0-openjdk-1.8.0.151-1.b12.fc27.x86_64
drwxr-xr-x. 3 root root 4096 Jan 24 2018
java-1.8.0-openjdk-1.8.0.161-0.b14.fc27.x86_64
drwxr-xr-x. 3 root root 4096 Feb 6 2018
java-1.8.0-openjdk-1.8.0.161-5.b14.fc27.x86_64
drwxr-xr-x. 3 root root 4096 Mar 29 2018
java-1.8.0-openjdk-1.8.0.162-3.b12.fc27.x86_64
drwxr-xr-x. 3 root root 4096 Apr 18 2018
java-1.8.0-openjdk-1.8.0.171-1.b10.fc27.x86_64
drwxr-xr-x. 3 root root 4096 Apr 25 2018
java-1.8.0-openjdk-1.8.0.171-4.b10.fc27.x86_64
drwxr-xr-x. 3 root root 4096 Apr 25 2018
java-1.8.0-openjdk-1.8.0.171-4.b10.fc28.x86_64
drwxr-xr-x. 3 root root 4096 Jul 3 2018
java-1.8.0-openjdk-1.8.0.172-12.b11.fc28.x86_64
drwxr-xr-x. 3 root root 4096 Jun 18 2018
java-1.8.0-openjdk-1.8.0.172-9.b11.fc28.x86_64
drwxr-xr-x. 3 root root 4096 Jul 23 2018
java-1.8.0-openjdk-1.8.0.181-7.b13.fc28.x86_64
drwxr-xr-x. 3 root root 4096 Sep 5 2018
java-1.8.0-openjdk-1.8.0.181.b15-0.fc28.x86_64
drwxr-xr-x. 3 root root 4096 Oct 4 2018
java-1.8.0-openjdk-1.8.0.181.b15-5.fc28.x86_64
drwxr-xr-x. 3 root root 4096 Oct 11 2018
java-1.8.0-openjdk-1.8.0.181.b15-6.fc28.x86_64
drwxr-xr-x. 3 root root 4096 Oct 11 2018
java-1.8.0-openjdk-1.8.0.181.b15-6.fc29.x86_64
drwxr-xr-x. 3 root root 4096 Nov 29 2018
java-1.8.0-openjdk-1.8.0.191.b12-11.fc29.x86_64
drwxr-xr-x. 3 root root 4096 Nov 1 2018
java-1.8.0-openjdk-1.8.0.191.b12-8.fc29.x86_64
drwxr-xr-x. 3 root root 4096 Jan 14 2019
java-1.8.0-openjdk-1.8.0.191.b13-0.fc29.x86_64
drwxr-xr-x. 3 root root 4096 Feb 6 2019
java-1.8.0-openjdk-1.8.0.201.b09-2.fc29.x86_64
drwxr-xr-x. 3 root root 4096 Mar 26 2019
java-1.8.0-openjdk-1.8.0.201.b09-6.fc29.x86_64
drwxr-xr-x. 3 root root 4096 Apr 23 2019
java-1.8.0-openjdk-1.8.0.212.b04-0.fc29.x86_64
drwxr-xr-x. 3 root root 4096 Apr 23 2019
java-1.8.0-openjdk-1.8.0.212.b04-0.fc30.x86_64
drwxr-xr-x. 3 root root 4096 Jul 31 2019
java-1.8.0-openjdk-1.8.0.222.b10-0.fc30.x86_64
drwxr-xr-x. 3 root root 4096 Oct 16 2019
java-1.8.0-openjdk-1.8.0.232.b09-0.fc30.x86_64
drwxr-xr-x. 3 root root 4096 Oct 16 2019
java-1.8.0-openjdk-1.8.0.232.b09-0.fc31.x86_64
drwxr-xr-x. 3 root root 4096 Jan 28 2020
java-1.8.0-openjdk-1.8.0.242.b08-0.fc31.x86_64
drwxr-xr-x. 3 root root 4096 Mar 23 2020
java-1.8.0-openjdk-1.8.0.242.b08-1.fc32.x86_64
drwxr-xr-x. 3 root root 4096 May 4 2020
java-1.8.0-openjdk-1.8.0.252.b09-0.fc32.x86_64
drwxr-xr-x. 3 root root 4096 May 22 2020
java-1.8.0-openjdk-1.8.0.252.b09-1.fc32.x86_64
drwxr-xr-x. 3 root root 4096 Jul 17 2020
java-1.8.0-openjdk-1.8.0.262.b10-1.fc32.x86_64
drwxr-xr-x. 3 root root 4096 Jul 28 2020
java-1.8.0-openjdk-1.8.0.265.b01-1.fc32.x86_64
drwxr-xr-x. 3 root root 4096 Oct 21 2020
java-1.8.0-openjdk-1.8.0.272.b10-0.fc32.x86_64
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 21 Sep 10 14:32 jre -> /etc/alternatives/jre
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 24 Sep 10 14:32 jre-11 -> /etc/alternatives/jre_11
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 32 Sep 10 14:32 jre-11-openjdk ->
/etc/alternatives/jre_11_openjdk
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 41 Aug 31 18:50
jre-11-openjdk-11.0.12.0.7-4.fc34.x86_64 ->
java-11-openjdk-11.0.12.0.7-4.fc34.x86_64
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 29 Sep 10 14:32 jre-openjdk ->
/etc/alternatives/jre_openjdk
I think the OpenJDK's scriplets need to be adjusted to remove everything.
--
Sincerely,
Vitaly Zaitsev (vitaly(a)easycoding.org)
3 days, 16 hours
Heads-up: grpc 1.41.0 coming to Rawhide with C (core) and C++ soname
bumps
by Ben Beasley
In one week (October 6), or slightly later, I will build grpc 1.41.0 for
Rawhide (F36). Fedora 35 will remain on 1.39.1.
As is traditional for minor releases of grpc, the C++ ABI was broken
(soversion bumped from 1.40 to 1.41). This time, the C (core) ABI was
also broken (soversion bumped from 18 to 19).
I will coordinate builds in a side tag of packages that use the C (core)
and/or C++ libraries. Maintainers of the following packages should have
received this email directly:
• bear
• frr
• perl-grpc-xs
Packages that use the Python bindings should be unaffected, as there
should be no incompatible API changes:
• buildstream
• python-chirpstack-api
• python-etcd3
• python-google-api-core
• python-google-cloud-core
• python-grpc-google-iam
• python-opencensus (orphaned)
• python-opencensus-proto
• python-opentelemetry
• python-pytest-grpc
• python-xds-protos
2 weeks, 5 days
Wine MinGW system libraries
by Zebediah Figura
Hello all,
I'm a contributor to the Wine project. To summarize the following mail,
Wine needs special versions of some of its normal dependencies, such as
libfreetype and libgnutls, built using the MinGW cross-compiler, and I'm
sending out a mail to major distributions in order to get some feedback
from our packagers on how these should be built and packaged.
For a long time Wine has built all of its Win32 libraries (DLLs and
EXEs) as ELF binaries. For various reasons related to application
compatibility, we have started building our binaries as PE instead,
using the MinGW cross-compiler. It is our intent to expand this to some
of our dependencies as well. The list of dependencies that we intend to
build using MinGW is not quite fixed yet, but we expect it to include
and be mostly limited to the following:
* libvkd3d
* libFAudio
* libgnutls
* zlib (currently included via manual source import)
* libmpg123
* libgsm
* libpng
* libjpeg-turbo
* libtiff
* libfreetype
* liblcms2
* jxrlib
and dependencies of the above packages (not including CRT dependencies,
which Wine provides).
There is currently some internal discussion about how these dependencies
should be built and linked. There are essentially three questions I see
that need to be resolved, and while these resolutions have a significant
impact on the Wine building and development process, they also have an
impact on distributions, and accordingly I'd like to get input from our
packagers to ensure that their considerations are accurately taken into
account.
(1) Should we build via source import, or link statically, or dynamically?
Static linking and source imports are dispreferred by Fedora [1] [2], as
by many distributions, on the grounds that they cause duplication of
libraries on disk and in memory, and make it harder to update the
libraries in question (see also question 2). They also make building and
bisecting harder.
Note however that if they are linked dynamically, we need to make sure
that we load our packages instead of MinGW builds of open-source
libraries with applications ship with. Accordingly we need each library
to be renamed, and to link to renamed dependencies. For example, if
application X ships with its own copy of libfreetype-6.dll, we need to
make sure that our gdi32.dll links to libwinefreetype-6.dll instead, and
that libwinefreetype-6.dll links to libwineharfbuzz-0.dll and
winezlib.dll. I think, although I haven't completely verified yet, that
this can be done just with build scripts (i.e. no source patches), by
using e.g. --with-zlib=/path/to/winezlib.dll.
Accordingly, although static linking and source imports are generally
disprefered, it may quite likely be preferable in our case. We don't get
the benefits of on-disk deduplication, since Wine is essentially the
only piece of software which needs these libraries.
(2) If we use dynamic libraries, should dependencies be included in the
main wine package, or packaged separately?
This is mostly a question for packagers, although it also relates to (3).
I expect that Fedora (and most distributions) want to answer "packaged
separately" here, on the grounds that this lets them update (say) Wine's
libgnutls separately, and in sync with ELF libgnutls, if some security
fix is needed. There is a snag, though: we need libraries to be copied
into the prefix (there's some internal effort to allow using something
like symlinks instead, but this hard and not done yet). Normally we
perform this copy every time Wine is updated, but if Wine and its
dependencies aren't updated on the same schedule, we may end up loading
an old version of a dependency in the prefix, thus missing the point of
the update.
(3) If dependencies are packaged separately, should Wine build them as
part of its build tree (e.g. using submodules), or find and link
(statically or dynamically) to existing binaries?
Linking to existing binaries is generally preferable: it avoids
duplication on disk; it reduces compile times when compiling a single
package from source (especially the first time). However, we aren't
going to benefit from on-disk duplication. And, most importantly, unlike
with ELF dependencies, there is no standardized way to locate MinGW
libraries—especially if it comes to Wine-specific libraries. We would
need a way for Wine's configure script to find these packages—and
ideally find them automatically, or else fall back to a submodule-based
approach.
If we rely on distributions to provide our dependencies, the best idea I
have here would be something like a x86_64-w64-mingw32-pkg-config. And
if we use shared libraries rather than static, things get worse: we need
to know the exact path of each library and its dependencies so that we
can copy (or symlink) them into a user's WINEPREFIX.
For what it's worth, the current proposed solution (which has the
support of the Wine maintainer) involves source imports and submodules.
There's probably room for changing our approach even after things are
committed, but I'd still like to get early feedback from distributions,
and make sure that their interests are accurately represented, before we
commit. In short, it's not clear whether distributions want their
no-static-library policies to apply to us as well, or whether we're
enough of a special case and would be enough of a pain to package that
they'd rather we deal with the hard parts, and I don't want us to make
any assumptions.
ἔρρωσθε,
Zebediah
[1]
https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/packaging-guidelines/#packaging-stat...
[2] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Bundled_Libraries
1 month, 1 week
Release criteria proposal: networking requirements
by Adam Williamson
Hi folks!
So at this week's blocker review meeting, the fact that we don't have
explicit networking requirements in the release criteria really started
to bite us. In the past we have squeezed networking-related issues in
under other criteria, but for some issues that's really difficult,
notably VPN issues. So, we agreed we should draft some explicit
networking criteria.
This turns out to be a big area and quite hard to cover (who'd've
thought!), but here is at least a first draft for us to start from. My
proposal would be to add this to the Basic criteria. I have left out
some wikitext stuff from the proposal for clarity; I'd add it back in
on actually applying the proposed changes. It's just formatting stuff,
nothing that'd change the meaning. Anyone have thoughts, complaints,
alternative approaches, supplements? Thanks!
=== Network requirements ===
Each of these requirements apply to both installer and installed system
environments. For any given installer environment, the 'default network
configuration tools' are considered to be those the installer documents
as supported ways to configure networking (e.g. for anaconda-based
environments, configuration via kernel command line options, a
kickstart, or interactively in anaconda itself are included).
==== Basic networking ====
It must be possible to establish both IPv4 and IPv6 network connections
using DHCP and static addressing. The default network configuration
tools for the console and for release-blocking desktops must work well
enough to allow typical network connection configuration operations
without major workarounds. Standard network functions such as address
resolution and connections with common protocols such as ping, HTTP and
ssh must work as expected.
Footnote titled "Supported hardware": Supported network hardware is
hardware for which the Fedora kernel includes drivers and, where
necessary, for which a firmware package is available. If support for a
commonly-used piece or type of network hardware that would usually be
present is omitted, that may constitute a violation of this criterion,
after consideration of the [[Blocker_Bug_FAQ|hardware-dependent-
issues|normal factors for hardware-dependent issues]]. Similarly,
violations of this criteria that are hardware or configuration
dependent are, as usual, subject to consideration of those factors when
determining whether they are release-blocking
==== VPN connections ====
Using the default network configuration tools for the console and for
release-blocking desktops, it must be possible to establish a working
connection to common OpenVPN, openconnect-supported and vpnc-supported
VNC servers with typical configurations.
Footnote title "Supported servers and configurations": As there are
many different VPN server applications and configurations, blocker
reviewers must use their best judgment in determining whether
violations of this criterion are likely to be encountered commonly
enough to block a release, and if so, at which milestone. As a general
principle, the more people are likely to use affected servers and the
less complicated the configuration required to hit the bug, the more
likely it is to be a blocker.
--
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Twitter: AdamW_Fedora | XMPP: adamw AT happyassassin . net
http://www.happyassassin.net
2 months, 4 weeks
F36 Change: Drop NIS(+) support from PAM (System-Wide Change proposal)
by Ben Cotton
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/drop_NIS_support_from_PAM
== Summary ==
This change is about dropping user-authentication using NIS(+) from PAM.
== Owner ==
* Name: [[User:besser82 | Björn Esser]]
* Email: besser82(a)fedoraproject.org
* Name: [[User:ipedrosa | Iker Pedrosa]]
* Email: ipedrosa(a)redhat.com
== Detailed Description ==
NIS(+) was introduced by Sun/Oracle to easily share files and system
users between UNIX-alike systems within the same network, and has been
around for some decades. Its simplicity though opens a variety of
possible security issues, like not being able the verify whether the
shared information is actually correct and/or trustworthy. That said,
and with several more secure options (LDAP, Kerberos, Samba, etc.) to
achieve the same goal, we should at least remove support for NIS for
user authentication.
== Feedback ==
There was some discussion on
[https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.o...
the fedora-devel mailing-list]. Some people are reluctant about the
removal of NIS(+) support from PAM, while most are okay with it as
there are more secure alternatives (LDAP, FreeIPA, etc.) available.
== Benefit to Fedora ==
With this change we start directing our users and developers to move
away from NIS(+) to secure alternatives like LDAP and/or FreeIPA.
== Scope ==
* Proposal owners:
** Adapt the pam spec file to build without support for NIS(+).
** Communicate the removal of the PAM configuration for
user-authentication using NIS with the authselect maintainers; also
offer assistance to implement the needed changes.
* Other developers:
** Apply the pull-request to the authselect package.
** Test this change.
* Release engineering: [https://pagure.io/releng/issue/10351 #10351]
* Policies and guidelines: N/A (not needed for this Change)
* Trademark approval: N/A (not needed for this Change)
* Alignment with Objectives: N/A
== Upgrade/compatibility impact ==
Users that were relying on support for NIS(+) will need to move to
secure alternatives like LDAP and/or FreeIPA.
== How To Test ==
There is no need to test, as when configure switch is removed, support
is dropped.
== User Experience ==
For some users this change may be a bit disruptive and it may require
some learning curve for switching to alternative solutions.
== Dependencies ==
* The authselect package needs to be updated to drop its PAM
configuration for user-authentication using NIS.
* Apart from that there are actually no rpms, that directly depend on
the change of the functionality of the affected PAM module.
== Contingency Plan ==
* Contingency mechanism: Revert the changes made to the affected
packages and rebuild them.
* Contingency deadline: At beta freeze.
* Blocks release? Yes.
== Documentation ==
The documentation about sharing system users and files over NIS should
be dropped, if there even is any.
== Release Notes ==
Support for NIS(+) has been dropped from PAM. Users, who are
currently using NIS(+) to share UNIX users / groups within a network,
should migrate their setups to use LDAP or some other secure service
providing comparable functionalities before updating to Fedora 36.
--
Ben Cotton
He / Him / His
Fedora Program Manager
Red Hat
TZ=America/Indiana/Indianapolis
3 months, 1 week
libcurl-minimal
by Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek
Hi Kamil and everyone,
what is the plan with introduction of libcurl-minimal in Fedora?
IIUC, libcurl and libcurl-minimal both have the same Provides, so libcurl-minimal
can be used to satisfy automatically generated dependencies:
$ dnf repoquery --provides libcurl-minimal
libcurl = 7.78.0-3.fc35
libcurl(x86-32) = 7.78.0-3.fc35
libcurl(x86-64) = 7.78.0-3.fc35
libcurl-minimal = 7.78.0-3.fc35
libcurl-minimal(x86-32) = 7.78.0-3.fc35
libcurl-minimal(x86-64) = 7.78.0-3.fc35
libcurl.so.4
libcurl.so.4()(64bit)
$ dnf repoquery --provides libcurl
libcurl = 7.78.0-3.fc35
libcurl(x86-32) = 7.78.0-3.fc35
libcurl(x86-64) = 7.78.0-3.fc35
libcurl-full = 7.78.0-3.fc35
libcurl-full(x86-32) = 7.78.0-3.fc35
libcurl-full(x86-64) = 7.78.0-3.fc35
libcurl.so.4
libcurl.so.4()(64bit)
AFAICS, no other package makes use of libcurl-{full,minimal}.
In systemd we only care about a narrow subset of protocols, so libcurl-minimal is
perfect. I considered adding Suggests:libcurl-minimal%{_isa} in systemd. IIUC,
that'd bias dnf towards the installation of libcurl-minimal. But the problem
is that if some other package expects libcurl in the full version, it'll be
disappointed.
Hence my question: how to proceed with pulling in libcurl-minimal where
it'd be useful? Should I just add Suggests:libcurl-minimal%{_isa} in systemd
and let the maintainers of other packages add Recommends:libcurl-minimal%{_isa}
or Requires:libcurl-minimal%{_isa} if they need it? What packages would that be?
Another option would be do not do any of this at package level, but instead
pull in libcurl-minimal through comps or kickstart or equivalent when doing
installations.
(Sorry if this is all documented somewhere… I looked around, but didn't see
anything relevant.)
Zbyszek
3 months, 2 weeks
F36 Change: Enable exclude_from_weak_autodetect by default in LIBDNF
(System-Wide Change proposal)
by Ben Cotton
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/ExcludeFromWeakAutodetect
== Summary ==
exclude_from_weak_autodetect enables autodetection of unmet weak
dependencies (Recommends or Supplements) of installed packages and
blocks installation of packages satisfying already unmet dependencies.
In other words: When you don't have the recommended package installed,
it won't be automatically installed with future upgrades of the
recommending package.
== Owner ==
* Name: [[User:jmracek| Jaroslav Mracek]]
* Email: jmracek(a)redhat.com
== Detailed Description ==
The feature is designed to prevent an install of removed weak
dependencies from the system by users and to not install weak
dependencies missing after system deployment. It will change the
behavior of DNF, microdnf, and PackageKit. The feature will be
backported to all Fedoras, but in default, the feature will be off.
Additional information: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1699672
The default value for exclude_from_weak_autodetect configuration can
be overridden in `/etc/dnf/dnf.conf`
== Feedback ==
The feature was requested by [[User:Churchyard|Miro Hrončok]] and
supported by many others: See
[https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1699672 rhbz#1699672] for
more feedback.
== Benefit to Fedora ==
After the installation of a fresh system, the first upgrade will not
install a lot of weak dependencies. Some of them were excluded from
the kick-start installation set for good reasons (security, image
size, minimal functional set, ...), but after the first update, all
weak dependencies are installed, therefore some features of deployment
simply disappear.
== Scope ==
* Proposal owners:
** The feature is ready in Pull Request -
https://github.com/rpm-software-management/libdnf/pull/1279
** PRs only wait for a release of libsolv
** The Feature will be enabled in upstream as default, therefore from
Fedora 36, we start to release libdnf without a revert patch of
default in comparison to upstream.
* Other developers: The change requires a new release of libsolv.
* Release engineering:
* Policies and guidelines: A packaging guideline should be added that
discourages or forbids weak dependencies on fully versioned
(sub)packages (see
[https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1699672#c44 the
details]).
* Trademark approval: N/A (not needed for this Change)
* Alignment with Objectives:
== Upgrade/compatibility impact ==
No manual changes will be required. After the libdnf update, this
feature will be on by default.
== How To Test ==
1. Install package without satisfied weak dependencies
2. Upgrade the upgrade. With exclude_from_weak_autodetect=true, it
will not install weak dependencies of already installed packages. With
exclude_from_weak_autodetect=false, weak dependencies will be
installed during upgrades.
== User Experience ==
The change in default will help to keep some values for particular
deployments (a minimal system will be still minimal without disabling
weak dependencies).
Users will be able to remove particular weak dependencies and they
will be not installed on the first upgrade.
In case when the feature will not work according to the user
expectation it can be switched off in the dnf configuration file.
== Dependencies ==
libsolv - Required code changes are already in the libsolv upstream.
We only wait for the next libsolv release.
== Contingency Plan ==
There are no external dependencies, therefore we can easily postpone
the feature and the change of default behavior.
* Contingency mechanism: (What to do? Who will do it?)
* Contingency deadline: beta freeze
* Blocks release? No
== Documentation ==
The feature will be documented in dnf man pages.
--
Ben Cotton
He / Him / His
Fedora Program Manager
Red Hat
TZ=America/Indiana/Indianapolis
3 months, 2 weeks
Announcing LLVM Snapshot Packages for Fedora Linux
by Konrad Kleine
Dear Fedora packagers, developers and users,
we have some good news for you:
We are beginning to build nightly snapshot packages of LLVM for the latest
versions of Fedora Linux (currently 34, 35 and rawhide) for a growing list
of
architectures.
You can grab them here:
https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/g/fedora-llvm-team/llvm-snapshots/
Feel free to enable the copr repository with
$ dnf copr enable @fedora-llvm-team/llvm-snapshots
and then install the i.e. latest clang with
$ dnf install clang
Beware, that a snapshot release of LLVM is probably more unstable than a
regular release! If you run into a problem, I would kindly ask you to wait
and try it again with the next snapshot.
We hope you enjoy this peek into the next version of LLVM that you can now
try without too much hassle and without compiling it every day on your own.
Regards,
Konrad Kleine
Senior Software Engineer, Platform Tools
Red Hat <https://www.redhat.com>
kkleine(a)redhat.com
M: +49(0)151/21000244
D87A 77F4 2A58 C72D 12A7 203B C0A0 2C32 BCB7 3099
<https://www.redhat.com>
3 months, 3 weeks
F36 Change: Package information on ELF objects (System-Wide Change proposal)
by Ben Cotton
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/Package_information_on_ELF_objects
== Summary ==
All binaries (executables and shared libraries) are annotated with an
ELF note that identifies the rpm for which this file was built. This
allows binaries to be identified when they are distributed without any
of the rpm metadata. `systemd-coredump` uses this to log package
versions when reporting crashes.
== Owner ==
* Name: [[User:Zbyszek|Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek]]
* Email: zbyszek(a)in.waw.pl
* Name: Lennart Poettering
* Email: mzsrqben(a)0pointer.net
== Detailed Description ==
People mix binaries (programs and libraries) from different
distributions (for example using Fedora containers on Debian or vice
versa), and distribute binaries without packaging metadata (for
example by stripping everything except the binary from a container
image, also removing `/usr/lib/.build-id/*`), compile their own rpm
packages (for internal distribution and installation), and compile and
distribute their own binaries. Sometimes we need to introspect a
binary and figure out its provenance, for example when a program
crashes and we are looking at a core dump, but also when we have a
binary without the packaging metadata. When the need to introspect a
binary arises, we have some very good mechanisms to show the
provenance: when a file is installed through the package manager we
can directly list the providing package, but even without this we can
use build-ids embedded in the binary to uniquely identify the
originating build. But those mechanisms work best when we're in the
realm of a single distribution. In particular, build-ids can be easily
tied to a source rpm, but only when we have the source rpm is part of
the distribution and the build-id was registered in the appropriate
database which maps build-ids to real package names. When we move
outside of the realm of a single distribution, it can be hard to
figure out where a given binary originates from. If we know that a
binary is from a given distribution, we may be able to use some
distro-specific mechanism to figure out this information. But those
mechanisms will be different for different distributions and will
often require network access. With this change we aim to provide a
mechanism that is is very simple, provides a "human-readable" origin
information without further processing, is portable across distros,
and works without network access.
The directly motivating use case is display of core dumps. Right now
we have build-ids, but those are just opaque hexadecimal numbers that
are not meaningful to users. We would like to immediately list
versions of packages involved in the crash (including both the program
and any libraries it links to). It is not enough to query the rpm
database to do the equivalent of `rpm -qf …`: very often programs
crash after some packages have been upgraded and the binaries loaded
into memory are not the binaries that are currently present on disk,
or when through some mishap, the binaries on disk do not match the
installed rpms. A mechanism that works without rpm database lookup or
network access allows this information to be showed immediately in
`coredumpctl` listings and journal entries about the crash. This
includes crashes that happen in the initrd and sandboxed containers.
A second motivating use case is when users distribute their own
binaries and would like to collect crash information. Build-ids are a
solution that is technically possible, but easy to get wrong in
practice: users would need to immediately record the build-id after
the build and store the mapping to program names, versions, and build
number in some database. It's much easier to be able to record
something during the build in the build product itself.
A third motivating use case is the general mixing of Fedora binaries
with programs and libraries from different distributions, both with
our binaries being used as the base for foreign binaries, and the
other way around. Whilst most distributions provide some mechanism to
figure out the source build information, those mechanisms vary by
distribution and may not be easy to access from a "foreign" system.
Such mixing is expected with containers, flatpaks, snaps, Python
binary wheels, anaconda packages, and quite often when somebody
compiles a binary and puts it up on the web for other people to
download.
We propose a new mechanism which is designed to be very simple but
extensible: a small JSON document is embedded in an section in the ELF
binary. This document can be easily read by a human if necessary, but
it is also well-defined and can be processed programatically. For
example, `systemd-coredump` will immediately make use of this to
display package ''nevra'' information for crashes. The format is also
easy to generate, so it can be added to any build system, either using
the helpers that we provide or even reimplemented from scratch.
For the case where we mix binaries from different distros (the third
motivating use case above), this approach is the most useful when this
system is used by all distros and even non-distro builds. The more
widely it is used, the more useful it becomes. The specification was
developed in collaboration with Debian developers, and we hope that
Fedora and Debian will lead the way for this to become as widely used
as build-ids. But even if the information is only available from some
distros, it is still useful, except that fallback mechanisms need to
be implemented.
=== Existing system: `.note.gnu.build-id` ===
We already have build-ids: every ELF object has a `.note.gnu.build-id`
note, and given a core file, we can read the build-id and look it up
in the rpm database (`dnf repoquery --whatprovides debuginfo(build-id)
= …`) to map it to a package name.
Build-ids are unique and compact and very generic and work as expected
in general. But they have some downsides:
* build-ids are not very informative for users. Before the build-id is
converted back to the appropriate package, it's completely opaque.
* build-ids require a working rpm database or an internet connection
to map to the package name.
Three important cases:
* minimal containers: the rpm database is not installed in the
containers. The information about build-ids needs to be stored
externally, so package name information is not available immediately,
but only after offline processing. The new note doesn't depend on the
rpm db in any way.
* handling of a core from a container, where the container and host
have different distros
* self-built and external packages: unless a lot of care is taken to
keep access to the debuginfo packages, this information may be lost.
The new note is available even if the repository metadata gets lost.
Users can easily provide equivalent information in a format that makes
sense in their own environment. It should work even when rpms and debs
and other formats are mixed, e.g. during container image creation.
=== New system: `.note.package` ===
The new note is created and propagated similarly to
`.note.gnu.build-id`. The difference is that we inject the information
about package ''nevra'' from the build system.
The implementation is very simple: `%{build_ldflags}` are extended
with a command to insert a custom note as a separate section in an ELF
object. See [https://github.com/systemd/package-notes/blob/main/hello.spec
hello.spec] for an example. This is done in the default macros, so all
packages that use the prescribed link flags will be affected.
The note is a compact json string. This allows the format to be
trivially extensible (new fields can be added at will), easy to
process (json is extremely popular and parsers are widely available).
Using a single field rather than a set of separated notes is more
space-efficient. With multiple fields the padding and alignment
requirements cause unnecessary overhead.
The system was designed with cross-distro collaboration and is
flexible enough to identify binaries from different packaging formats
and build systems (rpms, debs, custom binaries).
See https://systemd.io/COREDUMP_PACKAGE_METADATA/ for detailed
description of the format.
One of the advantages of using an ELF note, as opposed to say a series
of extended attributes on the binary itself, is that the ELF note gets
automatically captured and copied into a core file by the kernel.
Extended attributes would have to be copied manually, which might not
even be possible because the binary on disk may have been removed by
the time the crash is analyzed.
The overhead is about 200 bytes for each ELF object.
We have about overall 33200 files in `/usr/s?bin/` and about 36600
`.so` files (F35, single architecture,
results from `dnf repoquery -l 2>/dev/null | rg '^/usr/s?bin/' | sort
-u | wc -l`,
`dnf repoquery -l 2>/dev/null | rg '^/usr/lib64/.*\.so$' |sort -u|wc -l`).
If we do this for the whole distro, we get 69800 × 200 = 13 MB.
For a typical installation, we can expect about 300–400 kB.
Thus the overhead of additionally used space is neglible (also see the
Feedback section for more discussion).
Precise measurements TBD once this is turned on and we have real
measurements for a larger number of builds.
=== Examples ===
<pre>
$ objdump -s -j .note.package build/libhello.so
build/libhello.so: file format elf64-x86-64
Contents of section .note.package:
02ec 04000000 63000000 7e1afeca 46444f00 ....c...~...FDO.
02fc 7b227479 7065223a 2272706d 222c226e {"type":"rpm","n
030c 616d6522 3a226865 6c6c6f22 2c227665 ame":"hello","ve
031c 7273696f 6e223a22 302d312e 66633335 rsion":"0-1.fc35
032c 2e783836 5f363422 2c226f73 43706522 .x86_64","osCpe"
033c 3a226370 653a2f6f 3a666564 6f726170 :"cpe:/o:fedorap
034c 726f6a65 63743a66 65646f72 613a3333 roject:fedora:33
035c 227d0000 "}..
</pre>
<pre>
$ readelf --notes build/hello | grep "description data" | sed -e
"s/\s*description data: //g" -e "s/ //g" | xxd -p -r | jq
readelf: build/hello: Warning: Gap in build notes detected from 0x1091 to 0x10de
readelf: build/hello: Warning: Gap in build notes detected from 0x1091 to 0x10af
readelf: build/hello: Warning: Gap in build notes detected from 0x1091 to 0x119f
{
"type": "rpm",
"name": "hello",
"version": "0-1.fc35.x86_64",
"osCpe": "cpe:/o:fedoraproject:fedora:33"
}
</pre>
<pre>
$ coredumpctl info
PID: 44522 (fsverity)
...
Package: fsverity-utils/1.3-1
build-id: ac89bf7175b04d7eec7f6544a923f45be111f0be
Message: Process 44522 (fsverity) of user 1000 dumped core.
Found module
/home/bluca/git/fsverity-utils/libfsverity.so.0 with build-id:
fa40fdfb79aea84167c98ca8a89add9ac4f51069
Metadata for module
/home/bluca/git/fsverity-utils/libfsverity.so.0 owned by FDO found: {
"packageType" : "deb",
"package" : "fsverity-utils",
"packageVersion" : "1.3-1"
}
Found module linux-vdso.so.1 with build-id:
aba08e06103f725e26f1d7c178fb6b76a564a35d
Found module libpthread.so.0 with build-id:
e91114987a0147bd050addbd591eb8994b29f4b3
Found module libdl.so.2 with build-id:
d3583c742dd47aaa860c5ae0c0c5bdbcd2d54f61
Found module ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 with build-id:
f25dfd7b95be4ba386fd71080accae8c0732b711
Found module libcrypto.so.1.1 with build-id:
749142d5ee728a76e7cdc61fd79d2311a77405a2
Found module libc.so.6 with build-id:
18b9a9a8c523e5cfe5b5d946d605d09242f09798
Found module fsverity with build-id:
ac89bf7175b04d7eec7f6544a923f45be111f0be
Metadata for module fsverity owned by FDO found: {
"packageType" : "deb",
"package" : "fsverity-utils",
"packageVersion" : "1.3-1"
}
Stack trace of thread 44522:
#0 0x00007fe7c8af26f4 __GI___nanosleep (libc.so.6 + 0xc66f4)
#1 0x00007fe7c8af262a __sleep (libc.so.6 + 0xc662a)
#2 0x00005608481407dd main (fsverity + 0x27dd)
#3 0x00007fe7c8a5009b __libc_start_main (libc.so.6 + 0x2409b)
#4 0x000056084814094a _start (fsverity + 0x294a)
</pre>
== Feedback ==
See [https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/18433 systemd issue
#18433] for upstream discussion and implementation proposals.
=== Concerns about additional changes to files ===
<pre>
17:32:30 <Eighth_Doctor> I think zbyszek underestimates how much of a
problem it is to stamp every ELF binary with ''nevra'' data
17:32:44 <mhroncok> zbyszek: so, assuming python has ~100 ELF .so
files and I change one text file
17:33:22 <mhroncok> (ignore for the time being that the .so files
often changed because of toolchain updates and assume they are stable)
</pre>
I tested this with python3.10. So far there are 13 builds of that
package in F35:
`python3.10-3.10.0-1.fc35`,
`python3.10-3.10.0~a6-1.fc35`,
`python3.10-3.10.0~a6-2.fc35`,
`python3.10-3.10.0~a7-1.fc35`,
`python3.10-3.10.0~b1-1.fc35`,
`python3.10-3.10.0~b2-2.fc35`,
`python3.10-3.10.0~b2-3.fc35`,
`python3.10-3.10.0~b3-1.fc35`,
`python3.10-3.10.0~b4-1.fc35`,
`python3.10-3.10.0~b4-2.fc35`,
`python3.10-3.10.0~b4-3.fc35`,
`python3.10-3.10.0~rc1-1.fc35`,
`python3.10-3.10.0~rc2-1.fc35`.
I extracted the builds (for `.x86_64`) and made a list of all `.so`
files (1368 files), and calculated sha256 hashes for them. No two
files repeat, there are 1368 distinct hashes. So the files are
'''already''' different between builds and the additional proposed
metadata does will not make a significant difference.
Note that this range of Python versions encompasses periods when the
package is under development and undergoes significant changes (alpha
versions), and when it's only undergoing small changes (rc versions).
The fact that we get different files in each build is not surprising,
because files embed build-ids which differ between builds. But even if
we ignore those, binaries generally differ between builds. Even sizes
tend to vary between builds: there are 636 distinct `.so` file sizes,
i.e. on average any given size only repeats twice (presumably most
often for the same file). Running `diffoscope` on `.so` files from
different builds shows minor changes in the assembly which I did not
analyze futher.
If people have specific questions, for example about overhead in some
scenario, I'd be happy to answer them. Until now, the issues that were
raised were very vague, so it's impossible to answer them.
=== Why not just use the rpm database? ===
<pre>
17:34:33 <dcantrell> The main reason for this appears to be that we
need the RPM db locally to resolve build-ids to package names. But
since containers wipe /var/lib/rpm, we can't do that. So the solution
is to put the ''nevra'' in ELF metadata?
17:34:39 <dcantrell> That feels like the wrong approach.
</pre>
First, there are legitimate reasons to strip packaging metadata from
images. For example, for an initrd image from rpms, I get 117 MB of
files (without compression), and out of this `/var/lib/rpm` is 5.9 MB,
and `/var/lib/dnf` is 4.2 MB. This is an overhead of 9%. This is ''not
much'', but still too much to keep in the image unless necessary.
Similar ratios will happen for containers of similar size. Reducing
image size by one tenth is important. There is no `rpm` or `dnf` in
the image, to the package database is not even usable without external
tools.
As discussed on IRC
(https://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/teams/fesco/fesco.2021-05-11-17.01.log....),
the containers ''we'' build don't wipe this metadata, but custom
Dockerfiles do that.
Second, as described in Description section above, not everybody and
everything uses rpm. The Fedora motto is "we make an operating system
and we make it easy for you to do useful stuff with it" (and yes, this
is an actual quote from the official docs), and this stuff involves
reusing our binaries in containers and custom installations and
whatnot, not just straightforward installations with `dnf`. And in the
other direction, people will build their own binaries that are not
packaged as rpms. But it is still important to be able to figure out
the exact version of a binary, especially after it crashes.
=== Why do this in Fedora? ===
<pre>
17:36:49 <mhroncok> I don't understand how non-rpm distros and custom
built binaries are affected by our rpm-build environment :/
</pre>
The idea is that we inject this into our build system, and Debian
injects this into their build system, and so on… As mentioned, this is
a cross-distro effort. Also, people can use it in their custom build
systems if they build and distribute binaries internally. The scheme
would obviously be most useful if used comprehensively, but it's still
useful when available partially. We hope that Fedora can lead the way.
(This is similar to build-ids: when initially adopted, they were used
only by some distros, but were useful even then. Nowadays, with
comprehensive adoption, they are even more useful.)
https://hpc.guix.info/blog/2021/09/whats-in-a-package/ contains a nice
description of a pathological case of packaging hacks and binary
redistribution. When trying to unravel something like this,
information embedded directly in the binaries would be quite useful.
== Benefit to Fedora ==
A simple and reliable way to gather information about package versions
of programs is added.
It enhances, instead of replacing, the existing mechanisms.
It is particularly useful when reporting crash dumps, but can also be
used for image introspection and forensincs, license checks and
version scans on containers, etc.
If we adopt this in Fedora, Fedora leads the way on implementing the
standard. Fedora binaries used in any context can be easily
recognized. Fedora binaries provide a better basis to build things.
If other distros adopt this, we can introspect and report on those
binaries easily within the Fedora context. For example, when somebody
is using a container with some programs that originate in the Debian
ecosystem, we would be able to identify those programs without tools
like `apt` or `dpkg-query`. Core dump analaysis executed in the Fedora
host can easily provide useful information about programs from foreign
builds.
== Implementation in Other Distributions ==
=== Microsoft CBL-Mariner ===
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CBL-Mariner CBL-Mariner] is an
[https://github.com/microsoft/CBL-Mariner open source] Linux
distribution created by Microsoft, targeted at first-party and
container workloads on Azure. It is used both as a container runner
host and a base container image.
Mariner adopted the ELF stamping packaging metadata spec in
[https://github.com/microsoft/CBL-Mariner/blob/1.0/SPECS/mariner-rpm-macro...
version 1.0], initially to add OS metadata, and package-level metadata
will be added in a following release.
=== Debian ===
A package-level proof-of-concept is included in the
[https://github.com/systemd/package-notes/blob/main/dh_package_notes
package-notes] repository.
A [https://salsa.debian.org/bluca/debhelper/-/tree/notes_metadata
system-level proof-of-concept] that enables ELF stamping by default in
all builds implicitly will be proposed for adoption in the future.
== Scope ==
* Proposal owners:
** create a specification (First version DONE:
[https://systemd.io/COREDUMP_PACKAGE_METADATA
COREDUMP_PACKAGE_METADATA]. We might need to make some adjustments
based on the deployment in Fedora, but no big changes are expected.)
** write a script to generate the package note (First version DONE:
[https://github.com/systemd/package-notes/blob/main/generate-package-notes.py
generate-package-notes.py])
** provide a patch for `redhat-rpm-config` to insert appropriate
compilation options
** extend systemd's coredumpctl to extract and display this
information (DONE: [https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/19135 PR
#19135], available in systemd-249)
** submit pull request to Packaging Guidelines
* Other developers:
** possibly add support in abrt?
* Release engineering: There should be no impact.
* Policies and guidelines:
The new flags should be mentioned in Packaging Guidelines.
* Trademark approval: N/A (not needed for this Change)
N/A
* Alignment with Objectives:
It might be relevant for Minimization. Even though it increases the
image size a tiny bit, it makes minimized images work a bit better.
== Upgrade/compatibility impact ==
No impact.
== How To Test ==
<pre>
$ bash -c 'kill -SEGV $$'
$ coredumpctl
TIME PID UID GID SIG COREFILE EXE
SIZE PACKAGE
Mon 2021-03-01 14:37:22 CET 855151 1000 1000 SIGSEGV present
/usr/bin/bash 51.7K bash-5.1.0-2.fc34.x86_64
</pre>
== User Experience ==
`coredumpctl` should display information about package versions.
`readelf --notes` or similar tools can be used on `.so` files and
compiled programs
to extract the JSON blurb that describes the originating package.
== Dependencies ==
None.
== Contingency Plan ==
* Contingency mechanism: Remove the new compilation flags. Rebuild any
packages that were build with the new flags.
* Contingency deadline: Beta freeze.
* Blocks release? No.
== Documentation ==
* https://systemd.io/COREDUMP_PACKAGE_METADATA/
* https://github.com/systemd/package-notes
See also [[Changes/DebuginfodByDefault]].
--
Ben Cotton
He / Him / His
Fedora Program Manager
Red Hat
TZ=America/Indiana/Indianapolis
4 months
