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

[Daan De Meyer]

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(+)

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2.43.2