news
An unstable Debian stable update
A bug in a recent release of systemd's network manager caused headaches for people managing systems that have a virtual LAN (VLAN) interface on a bridge; something one might want to do, for example, when configuring network interfaces for virtual machines. The bug affected several Debian users when upgrading the systemd package from v257.7-1 to v257.8-1. The updated package is part of the Debian 13.1 release, and the bug has snared enough users to cause a minor stir—due in no small part to the maintainer's response as much as the bug itself.
The bug in systemd-networkd was first reported to the systemd project on August 7 by Kenneth J. Miller, who encountered it in an Arch Linux package. The problem is a regression in the systemd 257.8 release; systemd-networkd will crash with a segmentation fault if a system has a bridge interface configured with a VLAN. This is not a common configuration, but it is supported by systemd-networkd and explained in its documentation. Certainly, users who have this configuration working would expect it to continue doing so when updating their system.
The regression found its way into the systemd package version 257.8-1~deb13u1 and was uploaded to the proposed updates repository for testing. Timo Weingärtner filed a bug reporting this problem against the Debian systemd package on August 30, before version 257.8-1 had moved into Debian's stable updates repository.
He explained his setup, offered to provide more detailed configuration information in private, and noted that the upgraded systemd-networkd worked fine on systems without a VLAN configured on a bridge. He added that he was reporting the bug in the hopes of stopping the new package from reaching the stable archive. Luca Boccassi, a systemd developer and one of the maintainers for the Debian package, as well as the most active uploader for it, responded on September 1 and asked Weingärtner to provide more information.