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Re: Packaging Harvest cached



Martin Schulze writes ("Re: Packaging Harvest cached"):
> Good morning Ian!
> 
> }Perhaps you should consider asking Ian M. to allocate a special user
> }or group for you ?  It isn't a good idea to give `nobody' any
> }priveliges ...
> 
> This aint no priveliges. Only the stored data is owned by nobody and
> the logfiles, too. That's all. I don't see that this needs a different
> user.

Yes, that is extra privilege [sic].  *Lots* of programs use `nobody'
as a generic user that cannot do any damage to any files belonging to
anything else.

*Nothing* should be owned by or writeable by nobody, unless it's
world-writeable in some appropriate way (eg /tmp).

This applies to logfiles just like anything else.

> }> }Mention it in the postinst.
> }> How?
> }
> }Err, by using `echo', `cat', `print' or whatever ??  I don't
> }understand the question.
> 
> Ah, that's exactely what I wanted to hear. I for myself hate
> installation scripts that produce to much of stupid output. An
> installtion should work without looking at the screen.

If it is important for the user to see the message then you should
have a `hit return to continue' prompt after it.  If it isn't then you
shouldn't display it at all.

> I was wondering if dpkg contains a mechanism to store these messages
> and display them later when everything is installed. This seems to be
> not the case, so I don't have to think about.

dpkg does all the configuration of everything after all the
installation, anyway, so you get almost this effect.

(There isn't any logging at the moment though.)

> }> I fear that I have to disable it completely. :((
> }
> }Is there something wrong with that ?
> 
> Wrong with what?

Disabling the internet-connectedness test.

> Upgrade mechanism and the like work best for debian if the machine is
> connected to the internet, but there are also a lot of people where
> the machine isn't connected to the internet, but also want to run a
> HTTP proxy.

Right.  So is there any reason why you shouldn't just remove the test ?
What did they put it there for ?

> The only other name could be harvest-cached and that's quite
> long. It's even longer than the field displayed by dpkg:
> 
> pfinlandia!joey(tty5):/tmp> dpkg -l
> Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge
> | Status=Not/Installed/Config-files/Unpacked/Failed-config/Half-installed
> |/ Err?=(none)/Hold/Reinst-required/X=both-problems (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
> ||/ Name         Version   Rev  Description
> +++-============-=========-====-===============================================
> ii  cached-i       1.4.pl0 2    Harvest HTTP Proxy
> ii  dpkg-i           1.0.8 2    Package maintenance system for Debian GNU/Linux
> 
>     harvest-cached 1.4.pl0 2
> 
> If much of you prefer harvest-cached, I will name it that way.

I personally do, but I'm not the final arbiter of things round here,
nor am I a consensus by myself :-).

I'm thinking of doing something to this listing, anyway (probably
making the name and version fields bigger, and/or allowing them to
overflow).

Ian.


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