Hi,
This message is more of a sounding board for me to get the issues
surrounding this sorted and point out what I am planning to do. But any
comments on this would also be appreciated. Especially #3 below.
Issue I see currently and in the future with signed databases:
1) Currently the repo dbs are updated just like downloading a package
file. If the update is started and canceled part way though, you get a
repo.db.part file which pacman attempts to continue downloading.
However, unlike package files, this file is not static content and so we
should never continue the download. See
https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/15657 . This can be handled by just
deleting the repo.db.part file if present, but it might be better just
never create .part files in the first place for repo dbs by downloading
to a temporary location and moving/deleting based on successful
completion. That would mean having a different download function for
repo dbs and packages. See #2 for additional reasons to split this...
2) Database signing. Currently the code downloads the database,
deletes the old now invalid signature, then downloads the new signature.
If the signature is valid, then all is fine. However, if it fails to
download or is invalid, pacman issues an error about failing to update
the database. The database on your system is now not correctly signed
(which is bad given its signature is only checked on update...).
I think that the old database and signature should only be overwritten
if the new database download is successful _and_ its signature is valid.
This requires downloading the database and its signature to a
temporary location and then moving the files only once they are
confirmed valid. That would require a different download interface for
package and database downloads, but that is a good thing as we can get
rid of the force crap from the one used for packages.
3) pacman -Syy behavior. Instead of adding a "force" flag to overwrite
the old database, would it be better to just delete the old database
first? Currently, if you use pacman -Syy and a database download fails,
you are left with the old sync database you told pacman to get rid of.
Is leaving pacman with no database for that repo a better solution?
I'm not sure about #3... But to fix #1 and #2, I think we need to
split the download handling for dbs and packages slightly unless someone
has a better idea of how to deal with those?
Allan
