Bug#3060: problems with new sysklogd-1.3-3

[Ian Jackson <ian@chiark.chu.cam.ac.uk>]

Martin Schulze writes in private email to me, which I hope he won't
mind me posting (because I think my reply may be enlightening):
...
> (Just fyi: the only difference between 1.3-3 and 1.3-4 is a (wrong)
> killall statement in the postinst script.)
...
> Funnily this doesn't work correct on tapiola - my multi unix system -
> too. I had 1.3-1 installed (syslogd 1.3-1) and installed 1.3-3
> (sysklogd 1.3-3) over it. I, too, have both packages:
>
> tapiola!joey:~> dpkg -l syslogd sysklogd
> 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        Description
> +++-===============-==============-============================================
> ic  syslogd         1.3-1          Kernel and system logging daemons.
> ii  sysklogd        1.3-5          Kernel and system logging daemons.
>
> Shall I send you the status file, too?

You don't actually have both packages.  dpkg has removed syslogd, and
left only the configuration files.  sysklogd is installed.

I suspect that many of the problems people have been having with
syslogd/sysklogd starting and stopping daemons erratically have been
due to a combination of old /etc/{init,rc?}.d scripts/links (which
syslogd will leave behind since it isn't purged, only removed[1], and
which sysklogd must therefore remove) and failure to use
start-stop-daemon in a correct manner.

Would this explain any of your problems ?

[1] syslogd's postrm probably only calls update-rc.d remove if it is
invoked with $1 = purge (or at least, that's what it should do).
sysklogd's somethingorother script should probably check for the
presence of rc?.d/???syslogd links and change them into sysklogd links
pointing at whatever the appropriate init.d script is (I presume this
may have changed its name too).

Ian.