Main Inclusion Report for DKMS

Requirements

1. Availability: DKMS has been available in universe since Ubuntu 7.10 and is updated/supported.

2. Rationale:

   1. DKMS is going to be used for building different restricted modules in Ubuntu Intrepid.
   2. DKMS is used extensively by Dell to provide new hardware driver support on existing versions of Ubuntu, in advance of new kernel-package releases or new linux-backports-modules packages. Dell factory installs the "gold" kernel for a release whenever possible, and uses DKMS to update single kernel modules in support of new hardware.

3. Quality assurance:

   • DKMS works out of the box, requiring no configuration. package does not ask any debconf questions.
   • DKMS has no long-standing bugs. Upstream maintainers are employed by Dell and paid to maintain the application. Upstream releases infrequently and cares greatly about stability.
   • no important bugs are filed anywhere. A few low-sev bugs are filed in the Fedora bugzilla.
   • the package does not enable exotic hardware per-se. It enables the installation and tracking of kernel modules, most of which are included in kernel.org already. DKMS provides a stop-gap mechanism by which new drivers can get updated on a user system before a new kernel-package or linux-backports-modules package is released.

4. Standards compliance:

   • FHS compliant
   • believed to be Debian Policy compliant. License is GPLv2+.
   • Debian library packaging guide N/A

5. Dependencies: no deps outside of main.

Security

1. No security vulnerabilities filed against DKMS.
2. Security of app:
   • no setuid binaries.
   • app installs in /usr/sbin as it requires root access to several file system directories such as /lib/modules/ and /boot for remaking initramfs.
   • app includes an initscript in /etc/init.d/ to check for and install module updates for new kernels, but no daemon.
   • app does not open any network ports

Reviewers

MIR Bug: https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/dkms/+bug/247394