Re: [OE-core][PATCH] wic/engine: warn about old host debugfs for standalone directory copy

Paul Barker
2025-12-18T11:47:04Z

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On Thu, 2025-12-18 at 11:34 +0000, Paul Barker wrote:
> On Thu, 2025-12-18 at 12:15 +0200, Dragomir, Daniel via
> lists.openembedded.org wrote:
> > When wic is used in standalone mode, it relies on host tools such as
> > debugfs. For directory host->image copies into ext* partitions, wic
> > uses scripted debugfs "-f" input with multiple mkdir/write commands.
> >
> > Older host debugfs versions (< 1.47) may behave unreliably in this
> > mode and can silently miss files. This does not affect builds using
> > debugfs from OE where the version is known to be sufficiently new.
> >
> > Add a debugfs version check and emit a warning when an older host
> > debugfs is detected. The warning is shown once per run and does not
> > alter execution.
>
> If the risk here is silently missing files, resulting in a corrupted
> rootfs or worse, I think this should be a hard error.
>
> Consider the case where someone relies on a device having a firewall
> enabled, but /etc/nftables.conf is silently missed during construction
> of the rootfs ext4 image. That could result in all ports being open.
>
> On the kirkstone branch we have e2fsprogs 1.46.5, does the same debugfs
> issue apply there or has it been patched?

Also, do you have any links to upstream bug reports or the commit(s)
that fixed this? I can't find anything relevant in the recent e2fsprogs
release notes.

Best regards,

--
Paul Barker

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