ACK: [SRU][Noble/mantic/jammy][PATCH 0/1] Include erofs in linux-modules instead of linux-modules-extra

[Roxana Nicolescu]

On 23/02/2024 14:25, Daan De Meyer wrote:
> Buglink: https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/2054809
>
> SRU Justification:
>
> [Impact]
>
> The erofs.ko module (CONFIG_EROFS) is currently shipped in linux-modules-extra. This makes it
> hard to pull in via the linux-virtual package, it can only come from the linux-generic one that
> also pulls in the firmware and everything else needed for baremetal, and that serves no purpose
> in a qemu VM. This stops VMs using these kernels from using the erofs filesystem. Erofs is a modern
> alternative to squashfs that supports more features such as ACLs. The following LPC presentation
> has more details on erofs and its advantages over squashfs: https://youtu.be/jt-hp_LtSBc.
>
> A user launching a VM using the linux-virtual kernel image is not able to mount erofs filesystems due
> to the lack of this kconfig. We make extensive use of erofs in systemd's upstream CI, which is running
> on Github Actions.
>
> [Fix]
>
> Please consider moving this module to linux-modules.
>
> These are already enabled in the 'main' kernel config, and in other distros. In Debian/Archlinux/Fedora
> it is a (core) module that is built by default.
>
> To verify this works, it is sufficient to create an erofs filesystem with mkfs.erofs and verify that it
> can be mounted:
>
> $ mkdir sources
> $ echo abcde > sources/file
> $ mkfs.erofs erofs sources
> $ mount erofs mnt --mkdir
> $ ls mnt
> file
>
> Without this module installed and loaded, the mount will fail. Once enabled, it will succeed.
>
> [Test Plan]
>
> 1. pull built linux-modules packages for architectures with do_extras_package
>     set to true;
> 2. extract the deb and check if erofs kernel module file exists:
>
>     $ dpkg-deb -R linux-modules-*.deb .
>     $ find . -name erofs.ko\*
>
> [Regression Potential]
>
> Moving a module from a less-common to a more-common package should not have any negative side effects.
> The main effect will be a little more disk space used by the more common package, whether the module
> is in use or not. There will also be more functionality available in the default installation, which
> means a slightly increased surface and possibility of new bugs in case it gets used.
>
> Daan De Meyer (1):
>    Include erofs in linux-modules instead of linux-modules-extra
>
>   debian.master/control.d/generic.inclusion-list | 1 +
>   1 file changed, 1 insertion(+)
>
Will include this to mantic and jammy.

Acked-by: Roxana Nicolescu <roxana.nicolescu at canonical.com>