Re: Upcoming Debian Releases
On Sat, 24 May 1997, Andreas Jellinghaus wrote:
> > > - Move config information from install scripts to "cfgtool" (???)
> >
> > I'm having a look at ways of doing this. It would be really cool to
> > integrate this into deity.
>
> there are three tools : cfgtool (lars wirzenius), nod (winfried
> truemper), dcfgtool (mine). and someone is working on a _real_ tool (all
> three have flaws, and if this way we will get a tool with all good
> features).
I know all this. But when will it be finished? What about beta versions?
Is there a mailing list (other than debian-admintool)?
> what they do :
> currently many scripts in /etc hold config values. this is a bad thing.
> one solution is to write these variables in other text files, and use
> the source command in the shell script to read them. this is not a good
> way IMO.
>
> the other solution is to have a small utility that stores these values,
> can change them and gives the values to the scripts.
The third solution, which I prefer is a utility which modifies the
variables within the scripts - it's faster, it is more "backwards
compatible" with sysadmins from other Unices, and generally it's nicer
(less dependant on the cfgtool at boot-time).
> as you can see, it's a small text database. so it has nothing, absolutly
> nothing to do with deity - that's a GUI.
OK, I should refrase what I wrote.
It would be really cool if we upgraded the packaging system to handle
configuration integrally (so we can do configuration _BEFORE_ an
installation, etc.). Deity definitely _IS_ the right place for this - a
GUI to do the configuration with, at the same time as packaging control!
> i will wait till the new tool is released, than we can remove all other
> tools (at least my will get removed - there is no reason to keep it.)
I wrote a perl script to do this (mainly as an exercise in perl, which I
am learning). If anyone wants it, I could happily package and upload it
into experimental.
> then we should :
> a) choose _one_ cfgtool (the current one have big flaws. the new one
> will not have them).
> b) change policy to _not_ allow config information in /etc scripts
> c) change policy to _not_ allow additional debian uniq config files to
> fix b). only the textdb should be used.
> d) think about getting rid of some config files only used by shell
> scripts, and use the textdb instead.
>
> > Footnotes 1, 4, 5, and 7 can be removed AFAIK.
>
> what about footnote 10 (cu* devices) ? debian 1.3 has no call out
> devices ! (*evil grin*)
True, this has been done in the package, but not everyone may have
removed their /dev/cua* files from previous installations.
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