Bug 2446155

Summary:	drop or adjust "Requires: gdb"
Product:	[Fedora] Fedora	Reporter:	Frank Ch. Eigler <fche>
Component:	anaconda	Assignee:	Martin Kolman <mkolman>
Status:	NEW ---	QA Contact:	Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity:	medium	Docs Contact:
Priority:	unspecified
Version:	rawhide	CC:	alpha, anaconda-maint, kkoukiou, mkolman, w
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Hardware:	Unspecified
OS:	Linux
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oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
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Description Frank Ch. Eigler 2026-03-10 18:55:08 UTC

$subject dependency arrived in 2018, as "# install time crash handling".

With https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/Restrict_ptrace_by_default in play,
it's not desirable to install full gdb if anything lesser, like gdb-headless
is sufficient.  For what it's worth, I can't see any references in anaconda's
source code to gdb at all, so maybe this dependency is obsolete.

Please investigate whether the dependency can be removed or downgraded to
gdb-headless.

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1 Martin Kolman 2026-03-13 14:12:38 UTC

We have gdb on the installation image for manual debugging purposes - while Anaconda does not call it, it is very useful when something crashes & we need to debug it. It would be hard to add it to an already running environment as we currently don't have an RPM database (for space saving purposes) not to mention external RPM repositories not being (easily) available in many uses cases that still can crash. So I think we want to keep the full gdb there for now.

Comment 2 Brian Lane 2026-03-13 16:31:21 UTC

It's worth noting that gdb was essential in tracking down https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2439813 (great work by adamw) so it should be kept in the installer iso.

Comment 3 Frank Ch. Eigler 2026-03-13 17:02:31 UTC

OK, just because it's in the installer image, that doesn't imply that the installed machine OS gets it, correct?  If so, then this is irrelevant to the Change and can close NOTABUG.

Comment 4 Brian Lane 2026-03-13 20:28:46 UTC

(In reply to Frank Ch. Eigler from comment #3)
> OK, just because it's in the installer image, that doesn't imply that the
> installed machine OS gets it, correct?  If so, then this is irrelevant to
> the Change and can close NOTABUG.

It depends :) If the system is installed from the netinst/dvd iso then it won't be included. But if it is a live install then yes, it will be included since it just copies the installer environment to system.