<chapter id="maintenance">
<title>Maintenance of the installer</title>
<para>

This document only provides an introduction to some tasks required to
keep the installer up and running. It should be mostly helpful for
d-i release managers.

</para>

<sect1><title>Updating to a new Linux<footnote><para>The same logic should
be applicable to the FreeBSD kernel, even if some details might be
different.</para></footnote> kernel version</title>

<para>
This is possible when the <classname>linux</classname> package gets
uploaded, bumping its ABI. For example, it gets bumped from
<code>3.9-1</code> to <code>3.10-1</code>. This becomes needed when
the <classname>linux-latest</classname> package gets uploaded, since
obsolete
<classname>linux-image-&lt;oldabi&gt;-&lt;arch&gt;</classname>
packages (and relevant kernel modules) get decrufted soon after
that. Daily builds start to fail to build at this point, failing to
fetch decrufted packages.

</para><para>

A cron job on <code>d-i.debian.org</code> generates an linux kernel
ABI summary for the <code>testing</code>, <code>unstable</code>, and
<code>experimental</code> suites, and also sends a notification when
the ABI gets bumped in any of them. The summary is available here:
<ulink url="https://d-i.debian.org/kernel-summary.html" />

</para><para>

The following files need to be updated:
<filename>build/config/*.cfg</filename>; beware, some architectures
have specific version handling, so it might be needed to update some
extra variables (like the upstream kernel version), rather than only
those containing the kernel ABI.

</para>

</sect1>


<sect1><title>Dropping a deprecated filesystem</title>

<para>

This is needed when the kernel drops support for a filesystem, say
<code>foofs</code>; on the kernel side, that means the following
packages go away:
<code>foofs-modules-&lt;abi&gt;-&lt;arch&gt;</code>. Kernel
maintainers should send a notification to the mailing list in advance.

</para><para>

From a quick grep under the <code>packages/</code> directory, it
appears that the following changes are needed. This list isn't ensured
to be exhaustive:

<orderedlist>
  <listitem>

    Drop all <code>foofs-modules-${kernel:Version}</code> occurrences
    from the files under the <filename>build/config/</filename>
    directory.

  </listitem><listitem>

    Get <code>partman-foofs</code> removed from the archive.

  </listitem><listitem>

    Move the <code>partman-foofs.git</code> repository below the
    <code>attic/</code> directory.

  </listitem><listitem>

    Update the top-level <filename>.mrconfig</filename> file to mark
    the said repository as obsolete, adding <code>deleted =
    true</code> to its section.

  </listitem><listitem>

    Update <code>kernel-wedge</code> if relevant. FIXME: Find out when
    that's needed, and what's needed.

  </listitem><listitem>

    Update <code>iso-scan</code> to drop <code>foofs</code> from the
    <code>FS</code> variable in the
    <filename>debian/iso-scan.postinst</filename> script.

  </listitem><listitem>

    Update <code>partman-auto</code> to drop <code>foofs</code>
    from the <filename>lib/resize.sh</filename> script.

    </listitem><listitem>

    Update <code>os-prober</code> to drop <code>foofs</code> from the
    <code>FILESYSTEMS</code> variable in the
    <filename>os-probes/init/common/10filesystems</filename> file.

  </listitem><listitem>

    Update <code>partconf</code> to drop <code>foofs</code> from
    the <code>file_system_modules</code> variable, but there might
    be some more occurrences.

  </listitem><listitem>

    Update <code>rescue</code> to drop relevant dependencies, and
    remove <code>try_load_module foofs</code> from
    <filename>debian/rescue-mode.postinst</filename> accordingly.

  </listitem>
</orderedlist>

</para>

</sect1>

</chapter>
