Bug#3095: xbase kills xdm and *then* asks (politely, but , belatedly)

[Stephen Early <sde1000@chiark.chu.cam.ac.uk>]

On Wed, 22 May 1996, Mark W. Eichin wrote:

> Preparing to replace xbase (using ./xbase-3.1.2-9.deb) ...
> stopped /usr/bin/X11/xdm (pid 4053 32381).
> no /usr/bin/X11/xfs found; none killed.
>
> About to upgrade the xbase package. To do this, xdm and xfs must
> be stopped. When they are stopped, all X sessions managed by xdm
> will be terminated.
>
> May I stop xdm and xfs? (y/n) [y]
>
> (I hit return, and of course get:
> no /usr/X11R6/bin/xdm found; none killed.
> no /usr/X11R6/bin/xfs found; none killed.
>
> it wasn't kidding :-)

I know. This is because older versions of xbase kill off xdm and xfs
unconditionally in their prerm. I can't do anything about this. I suppose
I could check the version number of the xbase that is being upgraded
from, but there's no easy way to compare version numbers in package
scripts at the moment.

Alternatively I could look for a running xdm and/or xfs and only prompt
if they exist. That is probably the better solution. Ways of doing that
cleanly?

Steve Early
sde1000@cam.ac.uk