Bug#354115: bug fix causes problems
On Sat, 26 Aug 2006, Andreas J. Guelzow wrote: To drop the order bind, hosts line from /etc/host.conf is very ill advised. It just took me a large number of hours to track the problem that an essential (for us) software package stopped working thanks for this unnecessary bug fix. I call it unnecessary since that line is simply not used in recent versions of glibc. This program that failed for us is Mathematica version 4.0. This is a statically linked program that uses the order line of /etc/host.conf. (While some in our department have migrated to maxima, several members are still using Mathematica, and failure to have this run correctly is a major problem!) Please don't drop such items with out regard to older pieces of software! The reason to remove the line is not that it's no longer used, the reason is that it's *misleading*. Now you have a point, some software may break because of this, but so far the only example happens to be jurassic statically linked software which is also non-free and proprietary (and of course Debian does not distribute). I don't feel a lot sorry for this. I think this is the kind of problem we should better document, instead of perpetuating the misleading line. May I suggest that you report this against the release notes document for etch? -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Bug#354115: bug fix causes problems
On Mon, 2006-28-08 at 19:25 +0200, Santiago Vila wrote: The reason to remove the line is not that it's no longer used, the reason is that it's *misleading*. That could easily be fixed by adding a comment line that the order line is only used by old versions of the libc library. There is no need to break old programs. Now you have a point, some software may break because of this, but so far the only example happens to be jurassic statically linked software which is also non-free and proprietary (and of course Debian does not distribute). I don't feel a lot sorry for this. This issue has nothing to do with the fact that Mathematica is non-free and proprietary. The problem would occur with any statically linked program that happens to use an older version of libc, whether free or not. I think this is the kind of problem we should better document, instead of perpetuating the misleading line. May I suggest that you report this against the release notes document for etch? I am not sure how the manual page for /etc/hosts.conf is anymore misleading now then it was before. I am quoting from the current page: --- The file /etc/host.conf contains configuration information specific to the resolver library. It should contain one configuration keyword per line, followed by appropriate configuration information. The keywords recognized are order, trim, multi, nospoof, spoof, and reorder. These keywords are described below. order This keyword specifies how host lookups are to be performed. It should be followed by one or more lookup methods, separated by commas. Valid methods are bind, hosts, and nis. --- I gather Debian does not care about backwards compatibility. Andreas -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Bug#354115: bug fix causes problems
To drop the order bind, hosts line from /etc/host.conf is very ill advised. It just took me a large number of hours to track the problem that an essential (for us) software package stopped working thanks for this unnecessary bug fix. I call it unnecessary since that line is simply not used in recent versions of glibc. This program that failed for us is Mathematica version 4.0. This is a statically linked program that uses the order line of /etc/host.conf. (While some in our department have migrated to maxima, several members are still using Mathematica, and failure to have this run correctly is a major problem!) Please don't drop such items with out regard to older pieces of software! Andreas -- Prof. Dr. Andreas J. Guelzow Dept. of Mathematical Computing Sciences Concordia University College of Alberta -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
