[CentOS-devel] Debuginfo packages for CentOS Stream?

Thu Dec 31 01:38:58 UTC 2020
Tetsuo Handa <from-centos at i-love.sakura.ne.jp>

I analyzed vmcore (kernel crash dumps) when I was working at a support center
as a technical staff for troubleshooting RHEL/CentOS servers. When using CentOS
in enterprise servers (despite RH does not provide support for CentOS, some
companies/organizations might provide fault-analysis service for CentOS), all
binary/src/debuginfo rpm files are expected to be available without delay and
remain available even after end of life. And

On 2020/12/20 12:11, Mike McGrath wrote:
>>> Once a new RHEL minor release is available, the "RHEL kernel" repository is moved to vault (or deleted?)
>>> and we re-start with an empty "RHEL kernel" repository. We will then add the new RHEL minor release's kernel.
>>
>> I hope that "RHEL kernel" for older RHEL minor releases are not deleted when a new RHEL minor
>> release becomes available.
>>
>>
> I don't think we have a particular retention policy for stream though even
> if we did, a simple local mirror would solve your problem, right?

since the support center I was working at and administrators who install RHEL or
CentOS or Ubuntu are different companies/organizations, maintaining local mirror
servers does not solve my problem.

What is sometimes troublesome and risky is that we need debuginfo rpm files.
I worry that availability of src rpm and debuginfo rpm is rather unreliable.
If debuginfo rpm files were unavailable, it becomes impossible to contribute
like https://lkml.org/lkml/2014/9/19/230 .

RH has infrastructure for serving all these files, but CentOS's infrastructure
looks poor. For example, although http://debuginfo.centos.org/8/x86_64/Packages/
contains kernel-debuginfo-4.18.0-*.rpm , http://debuginfo.centos.org/8-stream/ is
currently empty.

If binary/src/debuginfo rpm files for CentOS Stream will be removed like Fedora,
the support center I was working at would have to give up providing fault-analysis
service for CentOS Stream. If RH is expecting CentOS Stream users to contribute
with testing/debugging, I think that improving such distribution infrastructure is
important.

If CentOS Linux is moved to CentOS Stream, will this availability problem be solved?