apt pulls in -386 kernel on a -generic system, caused by dependencies (virtualbox-ose)

[Daniel Hahler]

Hello,

there's a major problem when installing virtualbox-ose or
virtualbox-ose-guest-utils in Hardy.

These packages each depend on a virtual package (virtualbox-ose-modules
and virtualbox-ose-guest-modules).

These virtual packages get provided by packages, which themselves depend
on linux-image-$ABI-$FLAVOR.

Now, when installing virtualbox-ose-guest-utils on a system with the
"generic" kernel being used/installed, apt does not recognized that
using virtualbox-ose-guest-modules-2.6.24-12-generic would be the better
match, but uses the first available "-386" instead.

So, when users install virtualbox-ose or the guest modules, they are
likely installing an additional kernel image, which isn't required at
all and causes confusion/problems on the next boot (e.g. wireless broken).

This does not affect users with "generic" kernels on amd64, because
there's no 386 flavor available for them.

More details are available on: https://launchpad.net/bugs/188579

Any ideas how this can get fixed?


Thanks for reading and thinking about it.

Happy hacking,
Daniel.

-- 
http://daniel.hahler.de/