Bug#321073: please add support for unionfs

James Clarke jrtc27 at debian.org
Sat Mar 4 17:29:55 UTC 2017


Control: tags -1 - patch

On Wed, Nov 15, 2006 at 09:41:14PM -0400, Anderson Lizardo wrote:
> Hi,
>
> The attached patch adds support for unionfs snapshot in pbuilder. It's
> based on a patch that I've made some time ago for version 0.128 [1],
> but just recently I had some time to update it.
>
> I've tested it on Ubuntu 6.10 (kernel 2.6.17). It would be nice if
> someone could test it on Debian unstable (I believe it will not work
> on sarge)
>
> The patch is split in two parts: unionfs_harmless_changes.patch
> contains changes that do not affect current functionality in any way
> but are required by unionfs. The patch reorders some commands so that
> BUILDPLACE is kept unchanged.
>
> The second patch (unionfs.patch) adds unionfs support.
>
> I've added some documentation in the man pages, but here is the basic
> usage (assuming you already have a unpacked rootstrap in
> /var/cache/pbuilder/build):
>
> pbuilder login --unionfs-snap /var/cache/pbuilder/unionfs-snap # login
> to the rootstrap
> pbuilder build --unionfs-snap /var/cache/pbuilder/unionfs-snap # build a package
> ...
>
> alternatively to the "--unionfs-snap" parameter, you can add this line
> to .pbuilderrc:
>
> UNIONFS_SNAP=/var/cache/pbuilder/unionfs-snap/
>
> and just use:
>
> pbuilder login
> pbuilder build
> ...
>
> To change the base rootstrap location, use "--buildplace <dir>" or
> change BUILDPLACE=<dir> in .pbuilderrc.
>
> KNOWN ISSUE:
>
> - due to a limitation in unionfs, some packages that use
> /proc/self/exe symlink to check for their full path (e.g. many perl
> modules) may fail to build. This is fixed in recent unionfs releases,
> but is disabled by default because it's experimental (look for
> UNIONFS_MMAP in unionfs' INSTALL file).
>
> [1] http://www.mail-archive.com/ubuntu-motu@lists.ubuntu.com/msg00553.html

Hi,
It's been 11 years since this patch was posted. I very much doubt it
still applies, but even if it did, overlayfs is the new unionfs, so this
won't work. I personally don't think this belongs in pbuilder (there's
cowbuilder, which wraps pbuilder to provide copy-on-write chroots via
LD_PRELOAD overriding libc functions, so perhaps there could be an
overlayfsbuilder (needs a snappier name)), but I'm not the primary
maintainer so that's just my opinion.

Regards,
James



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