Module-assistant fails during install

[DrKlahn]

I have been chasing a problem for a couple weeks now related to module-assistant. I have not been able to make much progress with it and any insight will be very welcome.

What has gone before can be seen at http://forum.doozan.com/read.php?2,1944 ... #msg-19440. The original problem, lack of build-essentials, was solved and then the module-assistant problem emerged from behind it.

The host is a debian Wheezy system running on a Pogoplug E02. debian loads and runs without issues. When attempting to load the iptables kernel module xtables-addons-common, module-assistant fails during the install. Starting from a clean reinstall, this is what happens:

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** Install the kernel headers from the install kit **
  cd /usr/src
  wget --no-check-certificate https://bitly.com/1zrgVzP
  mv 1zrgVzP linux-3.17.0-kirkwood-tld-1-bodhi.tar.bz2
  bzip2 -d linux-3.17.0-kirkwood-tld-1-bodhi.tar.bz2
  tar -xf linux-3.17.0-kirkwood-tld-1-bodhi.tar
  dpkg -i linux-headers-3.17.0-kirkwood-tld-1_1_armel.deb

** Update /etc/apt/sources.list to include contrib and non-free **
  apt-get update
  apt-get install kernel-package
  apt-get update
  apt-get upgrade

** Get the iptables extensions **
  apt-get install module-assistant
  module-assistant update
  module-assistant prepare
  module-assistant --verbose --text-mode \
> -k /usr/src/linux-headers-3.17.0-kirkwood-tld-1 \
> auto-install xtables-addons-common

Which results in the following:

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Updating info about xtables-addons-common
Updated infos about 1 packages
Bad kernel version specification at /usr/bin/module-assistant line 568, <$apt> line 6.
root@debian:/usr/src# uname -r
3.17.0-kirkwood-tld-1

I have tried both the 11.4 stable release of module-assistant and the 11.7 unstable release, and both produce essentially the same error.

The kernel in use matches the kernel headers:

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root@debian:/usr/src# uname -r
3.17.0-kirkwood-tld-1

The kernel headers are present in /usr/src:

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root@debian:/usr/src# ls -l /usr/src
total 70232
drwxr-xr-x  3 root root     4096 Jan 26 16:42 .
drwxr-xr-x 10 root root     4096 Feb 24  2012 ..
-rw-r--r--  1 root root   129088 Oct 22 00:16 config-3.17.0-kirkwood-tld-1
-rw-r--r--  1 root root 35952640 Jan 25 19:10 linux-3.17.0-kirkwood-tld-1-bodhi.tar
-rw-r--r--  1 root root    99416 Oct 24 13:02 linux-3.17.0-kirkwood-tld-1.patch
-rw-r--r--  1 root root   962560 Oct 24 13:06 linux-dtb-3.17.0-kirkwood-tld-1.tar
drwxr-xr-x 23 root root     4096 Jan 25 19:15 linux-headers-3.17.0-kirkwood-tld-1
-rw-r--r--  1 root root  9379084 Oct 22 01:56 linux-headers-3.17.0-kirkwood-tld-1_1_armel.deb
-rw-r--r--  1 root root 22548394 Oct 22 01:59 linux-image-3.17.0-kirkwood-tld-1_1_armel.deb
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root root  2822168 Oct 22 01:50 zImage-3.17.0-kirkwood-tld-1

Looking in module-assistant, which it turns out is a Perl script, and adding a few debugging statements did not illuminate the situation for me:

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561 sub prep {
562   print "chdir $usrc\n" if $opt_debug;
563   %envbackup=%ENV;
564   $ENV{ROOT_CMD}=$sudo if ($sudo && !$ENV{ROOT_CMD});
565   print "Debug: \$opt_kverslist[0] = <$opt_kverslist[0]>\n";
566   for $todo ($opt_kverslist[0]) {
567      print "Debug: \$todo = <$todo>\n";
568      my $kheaders = get_kpackage($todo)."-headers";
569      print STDERR "Debug: \$kheaders = <$kheaders>\n";
570      $source=$kerneldirs{$todo};
571      print STDERR "Debug: \$source = <$source>\n";
572      die "Bad kernel version specification" if ! $todo;

The resulting printout with the debugging trace:

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Debug: $opt_kverslist[0] = <>
Debug: $todo = <>
Debug: $kheaders = <kernel-headers>
Debug: $source = <>
Bad kernel version specification at ./module-assistant line 572.

Obviously module-assistant expects something in $todo, but the script is complex such that I can't figure it out.