Bug#1218: xbase install fails
David Engel writes ("Bug#1218: xbase install fails"):
> The preinst script for xbase calls start-stop-daemon to kill any
> running xdm and xfs processes. If a previous version of xbase is not
> already installed, start-stop-daemon fails with an error about not
> being able to stat /usr/X11R6/bin/{xdm,xfs}. This causes the preinst,
> and consequently the entire package install, to fail. This is could
> be considered a bug in start-stop-daemon, but since there isn't a
> manual page for it (hint, hint, Ian J.), I don't know if this is the
> intended behaviour or not.
I'd be reluctant to arrange that by default start-stop-daemon exit
with a non-zero exit status when the file specified with --exec
doesn't exist. Doing so would make it harder to catch errors where
the file specified with --exec was wrong.
I'd be prepared to add an option to start-stop-daemon, say
--oknonexist (a la --oknodo).
The only documentation for start-stop-daemon is, unfortunately, the
usage message and the source code. I'm quite busy at the moment. If
someone would like to contribute a manpage I'd be happy to include it
in the distribution, provided that it's accurate and well-formatted
(and therefore better than just reading the usage message).
The same goes for any of the other programs in the dpkg suite. dpkg
in particular is probably stable enough now to be worth documenting.
Ian.
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