Re: Removal of logfiles?

[Raul Miller <rdm@test.legislate.com>]

Martin Schulze <joey@kuolema.Infodrom.North.DE> wrote:
> Database, this reminds me. The *SQL packages ought to ask in their
> postrm script if the database data shall be remove, too. I'd like to
> see the same (I'd prefer a non-asking mechanism) would happen to not
> maintained (i.e. no rotating script, no package) logfiles.

Speaking of which, has anyone come up with a design for a prompting
system for dpkg, which let's you prompt only when desired?

We've got five major needs:

(1) dpkg {pre,post}{inst,rm} scripts need to glean information about
what the system administrator (user) wants.

(2) it should be simple and direct for first-timers

(3) it should scale easily for people doing batch installs

(4) prompting should be kept to a minimum

(5) system integrity is sacred

----------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm thinking we want an enhanced key/value system.  The key should 
be derived from the package name.  The value should be enhanced with
some set of flags.  There should be a way of falling back to values
associated with some other keys (for example, when package names
change for whatever reason).  

I can think of two flags that are reasonable:

(*) Use this value (if not set, this value is just a default).
(*) Value is read-only (if not set, we record the value the user enters).

I don't think it's right to require the system to do prompting, but
we probably want to provide some basic utilities to do common kinds 
of prompting.

I'm thinking that a directory under /var/lib/dpkg/ is as good a place
as any for this stuff to go -- one file per package with queries.
We'd want to make it easy to symlink it elsewhere, for people doing
network installs -- but I think that can be addressed just by documenting
the mechanism and having network install people make their own base
disk (or base image for use in nfs install, or whatever).

We want a certain amount of flexibility in the data we handle.  But
before delving into file format I wonder if anyone has any objections?

-- 
Raul


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