Re: Can/should debconf notes still be used?
On Tue, May 29, 2007 at 09:01:20AM +0200, Frank Küster wrote: > Now the question is, how should we notify the user about what we've > done? Since this is a violation of the letter of policy, I don't think > a remark in NEWS.Debian is appropriate, and I'd like to use a debconf > note of priority "high". But notes are considered deprecated. On the > other hand, it's not an error, so the error type doesn't seem > appropriate... IMHO, documenting a policy violation in a package is never an acceptable solution, whether that's via NEWS.Debian or a debconf note. I would rather suggest that this is not a policy violation; policy does say that "local changes" must be preserved, but a) if the config files were deleted by tetex this is not a "local change", b) I don't think the requirement to preserve local changes was ever meant to be taken as "admins have an inalienable right to screw up a package's installation, and packages must not try to correct for this", which seems to be the case you're describing. C.f. the handling of update-rc.d, which considers the removal of all rc.d symlinks to be an invalid config and recreates them for the user. -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.debian.org/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Can/should debconf notes still be used?
Steve Langasek <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I would rather suggest that this is not a policy violation; policy does say > that "local changes" must be preserved, but a) if the config files were > deleted by tetex this is not a "local change", b) I don't think the > requirement to preserve local changes was ever meant to be taken as "admins > have an inalienable right to screw up a package's installation, and packages > must not try to correct for this", which seems to be the case you're > describing. That way to look at it makes me feel much better... Regards, Frank -- Dr. Frank Küster Single Molecule Spectroscopy, Protein Folding @ Inst. f. Biochemie, Univ. Zürich Debian Developer (teTeX/TeXLive)
Re: Can/should debconf notes still be used?
On Tue, 29 May 2007, Frank Küster wrote: > To me, the solution is to resurrect these conffiles without > prompting, because prompting doesn't make sense if the only working > answer is "yes". Can you test to see if the system is working without the conffiles? Then if it is, then assume the deletion was intentional (and perhaps give information in NEWS.Debian on how to restore them); if not, restore them once. Don Armstrong -- DIE! -- Maritza Campos http://www.crfh.net/d/20020601.html http://www.donarmstrong.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu
Re: Can/should debconf notes still be used?
Don Armstrong <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Tue, 29 May 2007, Frank Küster wrote: >> To me, the solution is to resurrect these conffiles without >> prompting, because prompting doesn't make sense if the only working >> answer is "yes". > > Can you test to see if the system is working without the conffiles? There are about 8 RC bug reports which show quite clearly that it doesn't. There's no sense in testing that in the maintainer script. If a local admin hacked the system so much that it keeps on working without them, I frankly don't care - it's no longer a Debian TeX Live system. > if not, > restore them once. Yes, we'll do it only once anyway. Regards, Frank -- Dr. Frank Küster Single Molecule Spectroscopy, Protein Folding @ Inst. f. Biochemie, Univ. Zürich Debian Developer (teTeX/TeXLive)
Re: Can/should debconf notes still be used?
On Tue, 29 May 2007, Frank Küster wrote: > Don Armstrong <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On Tue, 29 May 2007, Frank Küster wrote: > >> To me, the solution is to resurrect these conffiles without > >> prompting, because prompting doesn't make sense if the only working > >> answer is "yes". > > > > Can you test to see if the system is working without the conffiles? > > There are about 8 RC bug reports which show quite clearly that it > doesn't. There's no sense in testing that in the maintainer script. If > a local admin hacked the system so much that it keeps on working without > them, I frankly don't care - it's no longer a Debian TeX Live system. My point was that in such a system you'd likely end up breaking it by reinstalling the conffiles; if such a test is relatively easy, then it'd be worth it. If not, then a NEWS.Debian entry on how to return to the previous configuration is probably good enough for such an admin. Don Armstrong -- I shall require that [a scientific system's] logical form shall be such that it can be singled out, by means of emperical tests, in a negative sense: it must be possible for an emperical scientific system to be refuted by experience. -- Sir Karl Popper _Logic of Scientific Discovery_ �6 http://www.donarmstrong.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu
Re: Can/should debconf notes still be used?
Don Armstrong <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Tue, 29 May 2007, Frank Küster wrote: >> Don Armstrong <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> > On Tue, 29 May 2007, Frank Küster wrote: >> >> To me, the solution is to resurrect these conffiles without >> >> prompting, because prompting doesn't make sense if the only working >> >> answer is "yes". >> > >> > Can you test to see if the system is working without the conffiles? >> >> There are about 8 RC bug reports which show quite clearly that it >> doesn't. There's no sense in testing that in the maintainer script. If >> a local admin hacked the system so much that it keeps on working without >> them, I frankly don't care - it's no longer a Debian TeX Live system. > > My point was that in such a system you'd likely end up breaking it by > reinstalling the conffiles; No, the trick would be to hack formats or executables to simply ignore those files - reinstalling them won't have any effect. > if such a test is relatively easy, then > it'd be worth it. If not, then a NEWS.Debian entry on how to return to > the previous configuration is probably good enough for such an admin. We'll do that; the test would be quite hard, because there are tons of possibilities to misconfigure your system such that the error looks quite similar to a missing file. Regards, Frank -- Dr. Frank Küster Single Molecule Spectroscopy, Protein Folding @ Inst. f. Biochemie, Univ. Zürich Debian Developer (teTeX/TeXLive)
Re: Can/should debconf notes still be used?
On Tue, May 29, 2007 at 01:22:10PM +0200, Frank Küster wrote: > Don Armstrong <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > On Tue, 29 May 2007, Frank Küster wrote: > >> To me, the solution is to resurrect these conffiles without > >> prompting, because prompting doesn't make sense if the only working > >> answer is "yes". > > Can you test to see if the system is working without the conffiles? > There are about 8 RC bug reports which show quite clearly that it > doesn't. There's no sense in testing that in the maintainer script. If > a local admin hacked the system so much that it keeps on working without > them, I frankly don't care - it's no longer a Debian TeX Live system. > > if not, > > restore them once. > Yes, we'll do it only once anyway. How do you plan to ensure that? Since old versions of the tetex packages with the broken postrm are still in the wild, and a user may have already removed the tetex package but *not* purged it yet by the time fixed tetex packages became available, AFAICS any strategy that will make sure that the conffiles are only restored once (e.g., by only restoring the conffiles when upgrading from an older version of the texlive packages) will not be able to reliably fix this problem for all users. -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.debian.org/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Can/should debconf notes still be used?
Steve Langasek <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> Yes, we'll do it only once anyway. > > How do you plan to ensure that? Sorry, no plan, I was just dreaming. Or deliring. > Since old versions of the tetex packages > with the broken postrm are still in the wild, and a user may have already > removed the tetex package but *not* purged it yet by the time fixed tetex > packages became available, AFAICS any strategy that will make sure that the > conffiles are only restored once (e.g., by only restoring the conffiles when > upgrading from an older version of the texlive packages) will not be able to > reliably fix this problem for all users. Exactly. And I think it's not worth the effort to do some weird "touch /var/whatever" stuff which is error-prone again. As long as Debian packages of texlive-base require the presence of modes.mf to be configured, and Debian packages of tl-base-bin require pdftexconfig.tex, we simply restore it with the original content if we find it removed. In case someone really wants to hack their system to not need the file (and loose any support by us), they can just have a file with only "%%\bye" or "\endinput" in it, respectively, which will of course respected. Regards, Frank -- Dr. Frank Küster Single Molecule Spectroscopy, Protein Folding @ Inst. f. Biochemie, Univ. Zürich Debian Developer (teTeX/TeXLive)
