Re: guaranteed non-interactive installation and upgrades
sean finney wrote: also, the ispell package asks you which language you use by default. it wouldn't be so hard for these packages to ask the same things in debconf, or at least respect your debconf settings, and considering that they ship with stock debian you'd think that they'd have already done so... That is already done in ispell dicts and wordlists in unstable. just some thoughts sean Hope you like it -- = Agustin Martin Domingo, Dpto. de Fisica, ETS Arquitectura Madrid, (U. Politecnica de Madrid) tel: +34 91-336-6536, Fax: +34 91-336-6554, email:[EMAIL PROTECTED], http://corbu.aq.upm.es/~agmartin/welcome.html
Re: guaranteed non-interactive installation and upgrades
Am 9.12.02 um 10:30:05 schrieb Agustín Martín Domingo: That is already done in ispell dicts and wordlists in unstable. [...] Hope you like it Is that the question that is asked again and again for all of the dictionaries I install? No, I don't particularly like it. The questions should only be asked once all dictionaries are there; how to do that is beyond me. Bye, Mike -- |=| Michael Piefel |=| Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin |=| Tel. (+49 30) 2093 3831
Re: guaranteed non-interactive installation and upgrades
Michael Piefel wrote: Is that the question that is asked again and again for all of the dictionaries I install? No, I don't particularly like it. The questions should only be asked once all dictionaries are there; how to do that is beyond me. No, what you mention is the old behavior. If you install the ispell stuff at unstable with apt you should be prompted by debconf only once for all the ispell dicts and only once for all the wordlists you install. You will be prompted *before* the dictionaries are unpacked as debconf usually does, but for all dictionaries you decided to install. If you reinstall an already installed dictionary for which you have already been debconf prompted no aditional prompt will be done. Have you been prompted by debconf? The new system still is not ready to pass to testing as a whole due to some problems in the mips/mipsel arches. Since this system is not compatible with the old one we really do not want to have them mixed. If you are not having such behavior and you are using the stuff at unstable please file a bug against dictionaries-common package with as much the information you can provide, e.g., ispell version, installed dicts and versions and so on. Cheers, -- = Agustin Martin Domingo, Dpto. de Fisica, ETS Arquitectura Madrid, (U. Politecnica de Madrid) tel: +34 91-336-6536, Fax: +34 91-336-6554, email:[EMAIL PROTECTED], http://corbu.aq.upm.es/~agmartin/welcome.html
Re: guaranteed non-interactive installation and upgrades
#include hallo.h * Colin Walters [Sat, Dec 07 2002, 08:15:08PM]: But no one has shown any interest in fixing exim. On the other hand I was interested enough in Postfix to write the debconfiscation, and then John Goerzen and LaMont Jones were interested enough to fix and significantly improve it. Well, I would do this. On the other hand, I was told that some people are preparing sane packaged exim4 packages with debconfiscation. Making a policy proposal won't force anyone to do anything; it may motivate the exim people more, but I doubt it. Of course, with the policy proposal, we will have a better justification for switching to Postfix if exim isn't fixed. That is the only thing, and only if you wanna switch to Postfix, but not the ultimate solution. With policy, it would be easier to deal with lazyness and unwillingness of some maintainers. Whether we should have this policy proposal and make complete debconfiscation a goal for sarge is something that I don't have an opinion on yet. I do not ask for complete debconfiscation, there are packages where it is not feasable. But then their postinst scripts should be able to work non-interactive and choose something automaticaly, based on the profile settings when needed. Gruss/Regards, Eduard. -- Ich bin drin!
Re: guaranteed non-interactive installation and upgrades
Colin Walters [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sat, 2002-12-07 at 14:23, Bastian Blank wrote: On Sat, Dec 07, 2002 at 01:44:31PM -0500, Colin Walters wrote: And we could fix the exim issue by switching to Postfix as the default MTA... the sollution is not to use other packages, it is fixing the packages. But no one has shown any interest in fixing exim. [...] Hello, The packaging of Exim's new major version (v4) will use debconf, the preliminary test packages already do. Because the configuration file format has changed in a fundamental way, the configuration cannot be converted automatically[1] and Exim v4 comes as new packages (exim4-base+exim4-daemon-something) and not as upgrade for Exim v3. cu andreas [1] convert4r4 can try but: The output file MUST be checked and tested before trying to use it on a live system. The conversion script is just an aid which does a lot of the grunt work. It does not guarantee to produce an Exim 4 configuration that behaves exactly the same as the Exim 3 configuration it reads.
Re: guaranteed non-interactive installation and upgrades
On Sun, Dec 08, 2002 at 11:06:19AM +0100, Andreas Metzler wrote: Colin Walters [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sat, 2002-12-07 at 14:23, Bastian Blank wrote: On Sat, Dec 07, 2002 at 01:44:31PM -0500, Colin Walters wrote: And we could fix the exim issue by switching to Postfix as the default MTA... the sollution is not to use other packages, it is fixing the packages. But no one has shown any interest in fixing exim. [...] Hello, The packaging of Exim's new major version (v4) will use debconf, the preliminary test packages already do. Because the configuration file format has changed in a fundamental way, the configuration cannot be converted automatically[1] and Exim v4 comes as new packages (exim4-base+exim4-daemon-something) and not as upgrade for Exim v3. cu andreas [1] convert4r4 can try but: The output file MUST be checked and tested before trying to use it on a live system. The conversion script is just an aid which does a lot of the grunt work. It does not guarantee to produce an Exim 4 configuration that behaves exactly the same as the Exim 3 configuration it reads. Perhaps the best path here would be to run convert4r4 on upgrade, and then invoke the debconf questions afterwards to allow appropriate customization and let the user know it should be checked over? This is probably only possible if exim4 is presented as a proper upgrade to exim v3 instead of a separate package, however. -- Steve Langasek postmodern programmer pgpjy7U7JeJxn.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: guaranteed non-interactive installation and upgrades
Steve Langasek [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
On Sun, Dec 08, 2002 at 11:06:19AM +0100, Andreas Metzler wrote:
[...]
The packaging of Exim's new major version (v4) will use debconf, the
preliminary test packages already do.
Because the configuration file format has changed in a fundamental
way, the configuration cannot be converted automatically[1] and Exim
v4 comes as new packages (exim4-base+exim4-daemon-something) and not
as upgrade for Exim v3.
[...]
Perhaps the best path here would be to run convert4r4 on upgrade, and
then invoke the debconf questions afterwards to allow appropriate
customization and let the user know it should be checked over?
Hello,
No, not really. We did not write a complete parser for exim
configuration files that takes any given more or less valid
exim4-configuration file (=the result of convert4r4) and puts it in
debconf. exim4.conf is basically constructed from two parts, an easily
parseable debconf-managed part and a dpkg-conffile holding the common
parts.
I know this is a very crude description, if you want to take a closer
look get exim4_4.10.13{orig.tar,-0.0.4.diff}.gz from
http://www.logic.univie.ac.at/~ametzler/debian/exim4manpages/
There might come an addition to the config script that takes a look at
the installed exim.conf from exim3, and tries to extract the answers
given to eximconfig that generated this file and puts these in the
exim4-debconf-db, so that all/most questions would be preanswered.
This is
probably only possible if exim4 is presented as a proper upgrade to exim
v3 instead of a separate package, however.
If you uninstalled exim (instead of purged) before installing exim4,
switching would be easy once the exim3-parsing was installed.
cu andreas
--
Hey, da ist ein Ballonautomat auf der Toilette!
Unofficial _Debian-packages_ of latest unstable _tin_
http://www.logic.univie.ac.at/~ametzler/debian/tin-snapshot/
guaranteed non-interactive installation and upgrades
#include hallo.h * Brian May [Sat, Dec 07 2002, 12:40:12PM]: It seems to be set for a pbuilder login operation on the stable version of pbuilder. So do you think debian-image should check the value of DEBIAN_FRONTEND? Sounds like a good idea to me... I think we should document this in the policy and force maintainers, following this simple rule. When DEBIAN_FRONTEND value is Non-Interactive, no question should interrupt the installation process. Really none. Take the kernel postinst, for example. It rely on some keywords in /etc/kernel-img.conf conf, and does not care about DEBIAN_FRONTEND. This is a thing that should be changed. Imagine following solution: DEBIAN_FRONTEND is set to Non-Interactive. kernel postinst reads that value. If the keywords in /etc/kernel-img.conf are not set, does not ask the user but makes some autodetection. An additional variable in, say, /etc/setup-profile (eg. keyword: default-desktop) does tell the kernel-postinst to use the default installation settings (lilo as bootloader, no additional boot floppy). This concept could be expanded to all packages that use direct console interaction, where 99.9% percent of decissions can be guessed automaticaly, based on some profile-keyword. Same for the debconf questions with priority=critical. Show me one such setting where the answer cannot be determined automaticaly. Gruss/Regards, Eduard. -- Möchten Sie Ihre Festplatten formatieren? [J]a [N]atürlich [A]ber sicher
Re: guaranteed non-interactive installation and upgrades
On Sat, Dec 07, 2002 at 03:56:47PM +0100, Eduard Bloch wrote: I think we should document this in the policy and force maintainers, following this simple rule. When DEBIAN_FRONTEND value is Non-Interactive, no question should interrupt the installation process. Really none. yeah, i REALLY agree with that. this summer i was messing around with various automatic upgrades of software using things like dpkg --[gs]et-selections and debconf-communicate, and was very annoyed whenever i came across a package which completely ignored my requested non-interactive settings. for example exim (the default mta) doesn't use debconf and instead in the preinst (?) script asks you the questions it wants (the 1-5 questionnaire). also, the ispell package asks you which language you use by default. it wouldn't be so hard for these packages to ask the same things in debconf, or at least respect your debconf settings, and considering that they ship with stock debian you'd think that they'd have already done so... Same for the debconf questions with priority=critical. Show me one such setting where the answer cannot be determined automaticaly. even in those cases, which i think could arguably exist (though i can't think of any off the top of my head) there could be a way to respect non-interactive and keep things running happy. these few packages could pre-depend on mail-transport-agent and in their postinst script send an email to root saying this is a critical package that may break your system if you don't configure it and i couldn't autofigureout what to do, so please set this or that. just some thoughts sean pgpZ8Eu8lGFJE.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: guaranteed non-interactive installation and upgrades
On Sat, 2002-12-07 at 10:51, sean finney wrote: also, the ispell package asks you which language you use by default. Ispell is already fixed. And we could fix the exim issue by switching to Postfix as the default MTA...
Re: guaranteed non-interactive installation and upgrades
On Sat, Dec 07, 2002 at 01:44:31PM -0500, Colin Walters wrote: And we could fix the exim issue by switching to Postfix as the default MTA... the sollution is not to use other packages, it is fixing the packages. if the maintainers won't do that, we need a policy paragraph to force them. bastian -- You canna change the laws of physics, Captain; I've got to have thirty minutes! pgpDfMQgdtOk6.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: guaranteed non-interactive installation and upgrades
* Bastian Blank | if the maintainers won't do that, we need a policy paragraph to force | them. Would a policy-proposal forcing packages to use debconf for user interaction during installation get support? -- Tollef Fog Heen,''`. UNIX is user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are : :' : `. `' `-
Re: guaranteed non-interactive installation and upgrades
On Sat, Dec 07, 2002 at 08:23:16PM +0100, Bastian Blank wrote: if the maintainers won't do that, we need a policy paragraph to force them. No you need patches to help them. Greetings Bernd -- (OO) -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- ( .. ) [EMAIL PROTECTED],linux.de,debian.org} http://home.pages.de/~eckes/ o--o *plush* 2048/93600EFD [EMAIL PROTECTED] +497257930613 BE5-RIPE (OO) When cryptography is outlawed, bayl bhgynjf jvyy unir cevinpl!
Re: guaranteed non-interactive installation and upgrades
On Sat, Dec 07, 2002 at 03:56:47PM +0100, Eduard Bloch wrote: I think we should document this in the policy and force maintainers, following this simple rule. When DEBIAN_FRONTEND value is Non-Interactive, ^^^ no question should interrupt the installation process. Really none. This should be noninteractive, also the frontend is in lower case, as stated in debconf(7). regards, guillem
Re: guaranteed non-interactive installation and upgrades
On Sat, Dec 07, 2002 at 09:02:56PM +0100, Tollef Fog Heen wrote: * Bastian Blank | if the maintainers won't do that, we need a policy paragraph to force | them. Would a policy-proposal forcing packages to use debconf for user interaction during installation get support? i think it's a little heavy handed to do so, even if it would be the best way to have uniformity of packages. what i think would be perfectly reasonable though would be to require the package maintainers to at least respect the noninteractive frontend setting if it exists. sean pgppAOCJcuHGS.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: guaranteed non-interactive installation and upgrades
On Sat, Dec 07, 2002 at 09:20:11PM +0100, Bernd Eckenfels wrote: if the maintainers won't do that, we need a policy paragraph to force them. No you need patches to help them. well if the maintainer is too busy, i could try and figure this out and send a patch. granted i'm not incredibly familiar with debconf, but it'd be a great time to learn. sean pgpit90giWuLG.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: guaranteed non-interactive installation and upgrades
On Sat, Dec 07, 2002 at 04:08:24PM -0500, sean finney wrote: On Sat, Dec 07, 2002 at 09:02:56PM +0100, Tollef Fog Heen wrote: * Bastian Blank | if the maintainers won't do that, we need a policy paragraph to force | them. Would a policy-proposal forcing packages to use debconf for user interaction during installation get support? i think it's a little heavy handed to do so, Why? In the long run, I think it's the way to go. Although it might be a little too early (I don't think so, but YMMV), it certainly isn't heavy handed. -- wouter at grep dot be Human knowledge belongs to the world -- From the movie Antitrust
Re: guaranteed non-interactive installation and upgrades
#include hallo.h * Wouter Verhelst [Sat, Dec 07 2002, 11:03:23PM]: Would a policy-proposal forcing packages to use debconf for user interaction during installation get support? i think it's a little heavy handed to do so, Why? In the long run, I think it's the way to go. Although it might be a little too early (I don't think so, but YMMV), it certainly isn't heavy handed. That is the way to go. These ideas are old, and come to daylight again and again. Now, we have the best time to start with enforcing this simple concept. If we do not, but discuss another three months, need another two to prepate the policy change, another three for Debian Gods ;) to bless it, well other people will come and tell that Sarge is so far progressed, too late to change things, bla, bla, bla. Gruss/Regards, Eduard. -- Defaults sind dazu da von DAUs ignoriert zu werden und damit die Support-Stellen (aka #debian.de) zu verwirren. -- #debian.de
Re: guaranteed non-interactive installation and upgrades
On Sat, Dec 07, 2002 at 11:03:23PM +0100, Wouter Verhelst wrote: i think it's a little heavy handed to do so, Why? well, i should restate i guess. i agree it's the best thing to do. but i would also image that it suddenly puts a lot more work on the plates of many of the dd's, hence my thinking that suddenly adding this rule and the resulting flood of lintian/bug reports would be a little heavy handed. then again, the wishlist bug for exim to use debconf is almost two years old... so maybe just politely asking won't get it done :) sean pgp7qSnHRB4gE.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: guaranteed non-interactive installation and upgrades
On Sat, 2002-12-07 at 14:23, Bastian Blank wrote: On Sat, Dec 07, 2002 at 01:44:31PM -0500, Colin Walters wrote: And we could fix the exim issue by switching to Postfix as the default MTA... the sollution is not to use other packages, it is fixing the packages. But no one has shown any interest in fixing exim. On the other hand I was interested enough in Postfix to write the debconfiscation, and then John Goerzen and LaMont Jones were interested enough to fix and significantly improve it. if the maintainers won't do that, we need a policy paragraph to force them. Making a policy proposal won't force anyone to do anything; it may motivate the exim people more, but I doubt it. Of course, with the policy proposal, we will have a better justification for switching to Postfix if exim isn't fixed. Whether we should have this policy proposal and make complete debconfiscation a goal for sarge is something that I don't have an opinion on yet.
