Wrong search for libcurl.so.4 in initramfs-tools when vmware is installed

[chaerle]

System information

Type	Version/Name
Distribution Name	Kubuntu
Distribution Version	26.04
Kernel Version	7.0.0-15
Architecture	amd64
OpenZFS Version	2.4.1-1ubuntu5

Describe the problem you're observing

When VMWARE Workstation is installed (here version 25.0.1.25219725) and update-initramfs -u gives errors:

sudo update-initramfs -u
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-7.0.0-15-generic
mkinitramfs: copy_file: binary '/lib/vmware/lib/libcurl.so.4' not found
mkinitramfs: copy_file: config '/etc/zfs/vdev_id.conf' not found
mkinitramfs: copy_file: config '/etc/zfs/initramfs-tools-load-key' not found
mkinitramfs: copy_file: config '/etc/zfs/initramfs-tools-load-key.d/*' not found

When VMWARE is installed /lib/vmware/lib/libcurl.so.4 is a directory not a file, and this directory contains a libcurl.so.4.

The problem is that /usr/share/initramfs-tools/hooks/zfs does not distinguish between files and directories. It contains:

find /lib/ -type "libcurl.so.4" | while read -r libfetch; do

It should be at least:

find /lib/ -type f -name "libcurl.so.4" | while read -r libfetch; do

but maybe better:

find /usr/lib/ /lib/ -type f -name "libcurl.so.4" | while read -r libfetch; do

The skript also copies all libraries instead of only the first and it should not copy vmware versions.

The other errors

mkinitramfs: copy_file: config '/etc/zfs/vdev_id.conf' not found
mkinitramfs: copy_file: config '/etc/zfs/initramfs-tools-load-key' not found
mkinitramfs: copy_file: config '/etc/zfs/initramfs-tools-load-key.d/*' not found

appeared after upgrade from kubuntu 25.10 to kubuntu 26.04.

[ryao]

Copying dependencies is fragile. Many years ago, I implemented a similar function in Gentoo's genkernel that relied on lddtree to handle this correctly and it has been rewritten a few times since then:

https://github.com/gentoo/genkernel/blob/d9ba7fbd19915899dc2139befab88120890d9171/gen_initramfs.sh#L24

It is intelligent enough to avoid copying the VMware versions, but using it would require adding lddtree as a dependency. I am historically not involved with Debian initramfs support, so I am not comfortable making that call.

I have opened #18686 with the change you suggested, which, to my eyes, is the right one, short of adding a lddtree dependency on the initramfs-zfs package to adopt the copy_binaries() function from genkernel. That would be a much more involved change that someone who uses zfs-initramfs on a Debian-based distribution would need to do.