package.reboot-postinst
I think that there is a need for a package installation script to be able to
perform tasks after a reboot.
The reason for this is my experience in upgrading to the very latest glibc 2.1.
I realise that this is a beta package, but believe that this demonstrates a
more general issue that can affect release packages.
The libc6 package used to use the /var/db directory for storing password
database files (for systems with many accounts). Now it has changed to
/var/state/glibc which is a reasonable change. After installing the package
which put the new directory in suddenly my machine was not able to look up a
password, group, or service by any currently running process. This meant nscd
(the user-name caching daemon), xinetd, etc.
I initially filed a bug report against libc6 asking that nscd be restarted
becore I realised the magnitude of the problem. I now believe that the ideal
solution to such problems would be to create a sym-link from /var/db to
/var/state/glibc and then remove the sym-link on the next reboot. That way we
can cleanly move the directory and running programs don't need to be restarted.
Currently we have no facility in place for running a script once-only on bootup
(unless you want to have something under /etc/init.d which removes itself -
very ugle). I believe that we should.
Russell Coker
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