Re: /usr/share

[Kenneth MacDonald <kenny@holyrood.ed.ac.uk>]

>>>>> "John" == John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org> writes:

    John> Hi, As I recall, the whole idea behind /usr/share, and
    John> indeed /usr itself, is that it can be NFS-mounted in a
    John> read-only fashion by other computers on a network.  This is
    John> certainly a great idea, but I have to ask: why does Debian
    John> not support this?

    John> dpkg is not very smart when it comes to these things.  If
    John> you install package A on the server, you probably have to
    John> install package A on the each client as well (unless it is
    John> *entirely* contained in /usr or /usr/share, as the case may
    John> be).  Well, this is not good, because dpkg will barf when
    John> refused permission to touch /usr.

This has been gone over before.  I suppose we're looking for pruning capabilities in dpkg.  Say I put the following in /etc/dpkg.conf

ignore /usr/doc:/usr/man
verify /usr

then dpkg would discard any files in a package in /usr/doc and
/usr/man, and would check that files already in /usr match those it
would like to install.  It would fail to install a package if they
didn't match.

    John> How can we deal with this?  Also, what about the issue of
    John> keeping packages in sync between server and client?

The "verify" option above would mean you couldn't "get ahead" of the
server.

Kenny.

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