Bug#801065: Documenting how to not fail postinst on service fails to start

[Russ Allbery]

Steve Langasek  writes:

> Therefore I think it's always wrong for a package's postinst to exit 0 if:

>  - it ships a service,
>  - it is a new install or an upgrade on a system where the service was
>previously started successfully, and
>  - the service fails to start in the postinst.

An interesting problem case is a package whose point is to run a service,
but which requires mandatory and not-automatable setup before the service
can usefully run.  After package installation, the service cannot start.
So the options are either attempt to start the service as normal in the
postinst but ignore the failure, or add some more complex logic to
postinst to attempt to determine whether the service has been set up
properly and only attempt to start the service if it has.

I think our packaging system doesn't handle this case that well.  I can
make good arguments for several possible behavior choices.  But obviously
one cannot have package installation fail because the service cannot be
started when the package has to be installed so that you can configure it
so that the service can start.

-- 
Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org)  

Bug#801065: Documenting how to not fail postinst on service fails to start

[Steve Langasek]

On Wed, Feb 08, 2023 at 03:49:48PM +, Holger Levsen wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 08, 2023 at 08:39:36AM -0700, Sam Hartman wrote:
> > > "Holger" == Holger Levsen  writes:
> > Holger> I don't think there has been consent on the issue, thus I'm
> > Holger> tagging it moreinfo.
> > My reading of the TC and debian-devel discussion was that this was at
> > least a reasonable thing for maintainers to do,

> can you give pointers?

> > and whether it should be done depended on the circumstances.

> I do agree with that. I'm more against a general recommendation, depending
> on the circumstances, it's the right thing to do.

FWIW I think that it's the wrong thing to do if the "circumstances" include
reverse-dependencies on the package which expect to interact with the
service the package provides, as these packages may themselves do such
interaction in the maintainer script, resulting in cascading damage.

And the decision for whether there are reverse-dependencies on your package
is non-local and asynchronous.

Therefore I think it's always wrong for a package's postinst to exit 0 if:

 - it ships a service,
 - it is a new install or an upgrade on a system where the service was
   previously started successfully, and
 - the service fails to start in the postinst.

-- 
Steve Langasek   Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer   to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer   https://www.debian.org/
slanga...@ubuntu.com vor...@debian.org


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Bug#934536: info version shipped, but IMO complete, close this bug?

[Osamu Aoki]

Yes, info version is included and it contains appendix, too.

So closing this bug is right action.

Thanks for your effort.


On Thu, 2023-02-09 at 16:28 +, Holger Levsen wrote:
> hi,
> 
> actually I found the info version now, but it seems complete to me:
> 
> $ sudo apt install info
> $ info developers-reference
> 
> # voila. /usr/share/info/developers-reference.info.gz is where the file is.
> 
> So I'm still inclined to close this bug.
> 
> 

Bug#934536: marked as done (info page needs to include more from index.rst)

[Debian Bug Tracking System]

Your message dated Sat, 11 Feb 2023 14:40:46 +
with message-id 
and subject line info page has everything from index.rst
has caused the Debian Bug report #934536,
regarding info page needs to include more from index.rst
to be marked as done.

This means that you claim that the problem has been dealt with.
If this is not the case it is now your responsibility to reopen the
Bug report if necessary, and/or fix the problem forthwith.

(NB: If you are a system administrator and have no idea what this
message is talking about, this may indicate a serious mail system
misconfiguration somewhere. Please contact ow...@bugs.debian.org
immediately.)


-- 
934536: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=934536
Debian Bug Tracking System
Contact ow...@bugs.debian.org with problems
--- Begin Message ---
Source: developers-reference
Version: 11.0.1
Severity: minor


For info page building, text before toctree is included in the opening
info page but after is silently dropped.

Also it doesn't care appendix.

I am trying to include copyright text into the first opening page.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 10.0
  APT prefers stable
  APT policy: (500, 'stable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 4.19.0-5-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), 
LANGUAGE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
LSM: AppArmor: enabled

-- no debconf information
--- End Message ---
--- Begin Message ---
hi,

the info page has everything from index.rst, I'm thus closing this bug
report. Should there be anything else missing in the info format, it's
easy to open a new bug.


-- 
cheers,
Holger

 ⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀
 ⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁  holger@(debian|reproducible-builds|layer-acht).org
 ⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀  OpenPGP: B8BF54137B09D35CF026FE9D 091AB856069AAA1C
 ⠈⠳⣄

This too shall pass.


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