Debian Bug report logs - #1101211
isenkram: add support for generating and installing system-specific task-hardware-support metapackages

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Message #5 received at submit@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Paul Wise <pabs@debian.org>

To: Debian Bug Tracking System <submit@bugs.debian.org>

Subject: isenkram: add support for generating and installing system-specific task-hardware-support metapackages

Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2025 07:33:30 +0800

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Package: isenkram
Severity: wishlist

I would like to be able to mark all my hardware-support packages as
automatically installed and have a metapackage to keep them installed.

That way, when I move my Debian install between computers, I can create
a new metapackage for the new hardware, and purge the old one, which
would then also remove any packages only needed for the old hardware.

I could also create multiple task-hardware-support-* packages when
moving back and forth between multiple different home/work computers.

I can't find any easy way to get the name of the hardware from systemd,
so I suggest that the metapackage be named task-hardware-support and
there be a suffix option for users to add the hardware/hostname/etc.

I can do this manually but it would be nice to have a script for it,
and isenkram seems like the best place for that script to exist.

PS: Another similar thing is the find-dbgsym-packages --deb option.

-- 
bye,
pabs

https://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise

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Message #10 received at 1101211@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Petter Reinholdtsen <pere@hungry.com>

To: Paul Wise <pabs@debian.org>, 1101211@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Re: Bug#1101211: isenkram: add support for generating and installing system-specific task-hardware-support metapackages

Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2025 06:16:38 +0100

[Paul Wise]
> I can't find any easy way to get the name of the hardware from
> systemd, so I suggest that the metapackage be named
> task-hardware-support and there be a suffix option for users to add
> the hardware/hostname/etc.

I suspect running dmidecode and the equivalent modalias entry is a
better source for hardware model, try for example this:

  find /sys/devices -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 sort -u|grep dmi

For my Thinkpad X230 I get svnLENOVO and pvrThinkPadX230.

-- 
Happy hacking
Petter Reinholdtsen

Message #15 received at 1101211@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Paul Wise <pabs@debian.org>

To: 1101211@bugs.debian.org, Petter Reinholdtsen <pere@hungry.com>

Subject: Re: Bug#1101211: isenkram: add support for generating and installing system-specific task-hardware-support metapackages

Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2025 12:34:33 +0800

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On Tue, 25 Mar 2025 06:16:38 +0100 Petter Reinholdtsen wrote:

> I suspect running dmidecode and the equivalent modalias entry is a
> better source for hardware model, try for example this:
> 
>   find /sys/devices -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 sort -u|grep dmi
> 
> For my Thinkpad X230 I get svnLENOVO and pvrThinkPadX230.

It turns out that since systemd 248, the hardware info is exposed
by hostnamectl (no root), which also has machine-readable output.

   $ hostnamectl | grep Hardware

This is sourced from either DMI or DeviceTree (for ARM) and can be
customised in /etc/machine-info. Presumably it will get expanded
over time to support other mechanisms on other platforms too.

   https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/latest/machine-info.html#HARDWARE_VENDOR=

In addition, lshw can do this too, but it requires root access.

   $ sudo lshw | head -n4

DMI/DT hardware info also contains arbitrary bytes, so you would need
to safely convert it to the package name character set.

Also, some users might want to name their packages after hostnames
or hardware pet names or locations etc. So some ability to customise,
from a default based on the hardware name, would be useful.

-- 
bye,
pabs

https://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise

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