On Sat, Jun 09, 2001 at 05:56:08AM -0800, Ethan Benson wrote: > On Sat, Jun 09, 2001 at 08:07:43AM -0500, Stephen R Marenka wrote: > > > > First, I agree with you. However, my question is *what* is broken? Should > > dpkg know about DEBIAN_FRONTEND? How do conffile prompts get handled > > otherwise? Certainly there should be an elegant way to install a bunch > > of packages without prompts? > > for now all i care about is debootstrap and installing the base > system. FAI is a completly seperate bucket of worms were not going to > worry about right now. I wasn't thinking of FAI in particular, just the general solution to the problem we're facing. > the base system is composed of a very small set of packages and there > should never be a case where the config file question should come up > when installing base, period. powerpc-utils is broken. (or maybe its > dpkg's handling of diverted conffiles i don't really know). packages > in base should also not be asking questions in postinst, or blinding > running config programs *cough* quik *cough*. they should at the very quik is a PITA. > least check $DEBIAN_FRONTEND and skip such things (without breaking > the install). this is really not much to ask of the base system. at > the moment there is only two packages im aware of that violate these > conditions: FWIW I'm not disagreeing with you, but is this a matter of policy or personal taste? I don't recall reading about DEBIAN_FRONTEND or no conffiles in base packages in policy, but I could've missed it. Perhaps this is something that needs to be formally addressed somewhere or perhaps it is and I just need a pointer. > powerpc-utils > quik According to Richard Hirst, gcc-3.0 (at least for hppa) also has an issue. > bugs are filed against both, once powerpc-utils does away with the > useless diversion the conffile thing will be fixed. aph or someone > will have to NMU quik since the maintainer is MIA AFAICT. > > i would actually like to see the force-conffold thing go away as soon > as powerpc-utils is fixed so we can catch and fix any more broken > packages. i would also like to see debootstrap output the > packagename its working on when it encounters an error, its really > annoying to have nearly no way to find who is generating the errors > except seeings whats brokenly installed after debootstrap finishes... The way debootstrap is setup, that won't help, you have to look at the logs. debootstrap is running a repeat 20, more or less brute forcing the fixup of all the base packages (at least if understand correctly). -- Stephen R. Marenka If life's not fun, you're not doing it right! <stephen@marenka.net>
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