Re: Virtual Package: ftp-server | ftpd

[Peter Tobias <tobias@et-inf.fho-emden.de>]

Heiko Schlittermann wrote:
> : making it possible for any server that can meet the need to provide the
> : virtual package makes sense.  If the best you can think of as a reason to do
> : this for ftpd is to satisfy pre-selection bundling, then I'm not convinced
> : yet.
> 
> Ok, so we don't create a virtual ftpd package.  But I insist on using
> the alternatives mechanism, unless you or somebody else can convince me
> otherwise.

The normal alternatives mechanism (with symlinks) won't work very well
here. You can't be sure that all ftp daemons use the same command line
arguments. A possible solution could look like this:

1. every ftpd package adds its own line to /etc/inetd.conf. These lines are
   commented out (maybe with a special comment-chars value) by default.
2. every ftpd package registers itself to special file in /var/lib/dpkg
   (optionally with a priority similar to the normal alternatives mechanism).
3. if a new ftpd package is installed it asks the user if he wants to use
   it as the default ftpd (if the daemon has already been registered as
   mentioned above there should be no such question).
4. update-inetd (or to be more precise DebianNet.pm) will then read this new
   ftpd-alternatives file on startup and will only enable the line which has
   been selected as default (or the one with the highest priority).


Thanks,

Peter

-- 
Peter Tobias <tobias@et-inf.fho-emden.de> <tobias@debian.org> <tobias@linux.de>
PGP ID EFAA400D, fingerprint = 06 89 EB 2E 01 7C B4 02  04 62 89 6C 2F DD F1 3C 


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