kmod

[Andy Whitcroft]

Following some urging by pitti I have merged kmod from Debian with
our Ubuntu modifications to module-init-tools.  The only remaining
modifcations seem to be our local blacklist configurations and our local
path modifications.

I have put together a PPA with this updated kmod in it for testing.  I have
been testing this on pretty much everything I have for the last 3 weeks.
So far I have see no problems at all indeed things have been so smooth
that I when I came back to confirm my results I found it installed on my
travel laptop which I had not realised it installed.

I have tested this on i386, amd64 and armhf without issues.  I have also
tested that the Ubuntu path support for updates and dkms are working.
Plus, I have tested the blacklists are honoured when expected.

There are only two things that we should be aware of:

1) it contains a transitional package for module-init-tools, so to roll
   back we would need to epoch the original packages.  Though as i
   understand it Debian has abandoned module-init-tools so we should be
   getting no updates there which at least mitigates an epoch.
2) It has no "map" support.  I have as yet seen no ill effects from this.
   Perceived wisdom is that these map files are no longer required.
   From the testing I have done and from examination of those files
   on disk I have not seen them even accessed in a standard install.
   Given they have been disabled in Debian for a long time I suspect they
   are not used at all.

Overall I think kmod is ready and we should follow Debians transition
to it.  If you would like to test the packages they are in my 'black' PPA:

    https://launchpad.net/~apw/+archive/black

Baring any other objections I propose to prepare some packages and
get them reviewed with a view to uploading them sooner rather than
later.

Comments?

-apw