Package: consolekit Version: 0.3.0-2 Severity: important Hi!
As explained in bug #527846 (see its complete log, for more context), if a security update on one of the dependencies creates the *need* to restart console-kit-daemon, I find myself with the following dilemma: (a) I kill the daemon and wait for D-Bus to start it again (b) I stay with the insecure daemon running (c) I reboot the entire system Since there's apparently no way to restart the daemon while preserving its state, if I choose (a), I loose all registered sessions and could encounter awkward side-effects. On the other hand, (b) is not a viable option, when security is involved. Finally, (c) is simply *unacceptable*, especially for a production box where more than one user may be using the system, e.g. via SSH. For instance, think of a scientific computation workstation where users start long-running number crunching programs. The *only* case where I can live with the need to reboot the whole system is when the kernel is updated for security reasons. I really think that a daemon that cannot be safely restarted without unexpected consequences is badly designed. There *must* be a safe way to restart the daemon without unintended weird behaviors. Hence the severity of this bug is at least "important" (if not higher). I strongly recommend fixing this design flaw. I don't know exactly how this could be done: maybe there should be a signal (e.g.: SIGHUP, or even SIGTERM) that forces the daemon to save its state somewhere on the filesystem (probably somewhere under /var/lib , if I understand the FHS correctly), so that the state can be restored as soon as the daemon is started again. Another strategy could be that the daemon always keeps its state on the filesystem, and only wipes it out when it has to. This way, stop/start cycles for the daemon would not have a strong impact on the system behavior. There are probably better solutions... Please fix this issue, and/or forward the bug report to upstream, as appropriate. Thanks in advance. -- System Information: Debian Release: squeeze/sid APT prefers testing APT policy: (800, 'testing'), (500, 'unstable') Architecture: amd64 (x86_64) Kernel: Linux 2.6.26-2-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores) Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8) Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash Versions of packages consolekit depends on: ii dbus 1.2.12-1 simple interprocess messaging syst ii libc6 2.9-12 GNU C Library: Shared libraries ii libck-connector0 0.3.0-2 ConsoleKit libraries ii libdbus-1-3 1.2.12-1 simple interprocess messaging syst ii libdbus-glib-1-2 0.80-4 simple interprocess messaging syst ii libglib2.0-0 2.20.1-2 The GLib library of C routines ii libx11-6 2:1.2.1-1 X11 client-side library ii zlib1g 1:1.2.3.3.dfsg-13 compression library - runtime Versions of packages consolekit recommends: ii libpam-ck-connector 0.3.0-2 ConsoleKit PAM module consolekit suggests no packages. -- no debconf information -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected]
