Re: Base-passwd issues
Galen Hazelwood <galenh@apexxtech.com> writes:
[ I've CC-ed this to debian-policy because I really do think we need
to start talking about a solution to the underlying problem here
rather than always working around it in half-assed ways. (I include
myself in that category). ]
> I don't believe any package should have a prompt in post-install,
But until we have a better mechanism (which we desperately need), some
important packages *must* ask.
> especially not critical base packages which might be upgraded
> without a user present (I do that a lot). Therefore, I have two
> choices: I can do as I'm doing now, or I can omit the call
> altogether and just print a message telling the user to run
> update-passwd. I worry about the latter, because many people will
> probably just forget to run it, or might ignore the message.
In fact, most users will never see it. Until recently (with
dpkg-mountable's log file, which most people won't be using for a
while) there was *no* easy way to see the messages that scroll by as
dselect runs through hundreds of packages. And on fast systems, the
messages go by so fast that you'd never know if you even *needed* to
hit scroll-lock to look at them. Not pausing, if it's important, is
exactly the wrong thing to do (IMO).
Frankly, I think *more* packages should have questions in the
postinst. Then maybe this *important* problem would be annoying
enough that it would get solved. Going out of your way to accomodate
a broken arrangement just perpetuates it. Sometimes if something's
broken, the way to get it fixed is to hit it with a hammer until it
*has* to be fixed :>
If nothing else, couldn't we just have some temporary stupid
arrangement where we allocate a directory, say /var/dpkg/to-do/ where
packages put messages to the admin about things that *must* be done
after the dselect run. The understanding being that the admin needs
to check that directory after an upgrade, deal with whatever's there,
and then delete the files as they resolve the issues? Ugly, but
likely better than doing nothing...
> Any newbies who actually run update-passwd will get scared by the
> prompting and start saying "no", and their passwd and group files
> will never get upgraded.
So just put a big message at the start of the update-passwd run that
tells everyone what's going on, why they probably need to do this,
saying yes to the questions, yadda, yadda, yadda...
--
Rob Browning <rlb@cs.utexas.edu>
PGP fingerprint = E8 0E 0D 04 F5 21 A0 94 53 2B 97 F5 D6 4E 39 30
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