linux-headers metapackage installs wrong headers and dkms builds fail

[pallaswept]

Please pardon the improper bug report but I found a widespread issue that no users have reported.

I was assisting a fellow linux user with setting up a steamOS system (I do not use steamOS myself), and we required dkms to build a kernel module. In this case it was for superIO control, but searching the matter, I found it common for other devices such as network card drivers, but especially for the xone driver for xbox controllers.

dkms was failing to build, in spite of having installed the package linux-headers. It turns out that linux-headers was installing the current arch kernel headers. Even installing the patch-specific linux-neptune-headers failed, as it installed the headers for the now-ancient 5.13 version of that kernel. To succeed, we needed to install the specific kernel versions headers with the package linux-neptune-611-headers. This is fine in the short term, but obviously defeats the purpose of dkms since when the kernel updates and dkms is triggered, the build will fail due to the headers not being updated along with it.

Since problems with the header versions are very widely reported, I though that maybe someone should actually report it so that it can be fixed. Lots of talk about this on reddit, but none here, seems misplaced. I hope this helps.

[manuelafm]

Thanks for the report. To confirm, in principle everything was fine when using linux-neptune-611-headers?

I suppose that linux-neptune-headers should be removed from repos to avoid mishaps, and make something more clever to install the correct header packages when required.

[pallaswept]

Thank you Manuel

To confirm, in principle everything was fine when using linux-neptune-611-headers?

That's correct, worked like a charm.