Recent Woody upgrade, TeTeX, XFree86, and Mozilla

[Dale Scheetz <dwarf@polaris.net>]

Sorry for the multi-topic thread, feel free to split off subthreads.

In order to get a particular mozilla package to install I upgraded my
development system to the latest Woody archives. During the install I
noticed several things.

1. The Debconf errors reported on another thread cropped up for me a
couple of times during the install, and I swear that I was asked a set of
debconf questions before the download, and then again before the install.
Some of the questions were the same and some were different...

Here's the error message I trapped:

        (in cleanup) Can't call method "close" on an undefined value at /usr/lib/perl5/Debian/DebConf/ConfModule.pm line 476 during global destruction.
        (in cleanup) Can't call method "DESTROY" on an undefined value at /usr/lib/perl5/Debian/DebConf/Question.pm line 251 during global destruction.

2. During the tetex upgrade I was surprised to see the following:

texhash: Updating /usr/local/lib/texmf/ls-R...
texhash: Updating /var/lib/texmf/ls-R...
texhash: Updating /var/spool/texmf/ls-R...
texhash: Done.
Purging configuration files for latex2html ...
texhash: Updating /usr/local/lib/texmf/ls-R...
texhash: Updating /var/lib/texmf/ls-R...
texhash: Updating /var/spool/texmf/ls-R...
texhash: Done.

Debian packages are NOT supposed to muck around in /usr/local!!!!!
 

After the upgrade:

After the upgrade I was able to install mozilla and get it to work. 

Over last night, we had a power outage that went on for some time, so I
had to shut down my machine (the UPS will only last so long...).

When I cranked it up this morning ... no X!

I've been upgraded to version 4.0.2-1, and wdm gives the following error
in its log:

Config Error: /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/XF86Config:160

        DefaultColorDepth
shared/xfree86v3/config/display/default_depth doesn't exist
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Default color depth expected


I remember choosing 8 bit on a debconf screen, the question is, what do I
put in ..../default_depth, and where do I find it. There is no path that
contains xfree86v3:

dwarf:/# find / -path xfree86v3
find: /proc/370/fd: Permission denied
dwarf:/#

BTW, I don't have any idea why root is being denied access to this proc
file, but that isn't any where near the topic ;-)

There doesn't seem to be any file named "default_depth" on my machine, so
what will fix this?

I had a working mozilla last night. One that could even log into my bank's
secure services! This morning I can't even play spider ;-(

All help on this one very much appreciated...


Final Topic:

This brings me, FINALLY ;-) to the real point of this posting. Mozilla,
Progeny, and Debian.

First, this is not a complaint to the Debian maintainer of Mozilla, I
appreciate all he has said about the problem, and very much appreciate the
amount of time he spent explaining the solution for me. However, I am left
with a problem/quandry...

Question 1: 
Is there any reason that we can't include progeny's version of Mozilla in
Debian Woody until such time as our maintainer delivers his release.
Consider this an interumn NMU to ease pressure on the Debian maintainer so
he can resolve the required issues, while the rest of us can still apt-get
a working version from the Debian archives. This is, after all, exactly
the kind of "return to the Debian community" that Ian Murdock suggested
would be available with Progeny.

Question 2:
What can I do to help the Debian Mozilla Maintainer get the packages into
main? Last I heard there was some talk of "getting a lawyer to comment".
While I can't speak to the need, or lack thereof, of a lawyer's input,
when I was on the board of SPI there was a lawyer working for the corp.
If he is still available, this would be exactly what SPI is around to help
with. I'm afraid I've been out of all that or too long to know how to
approach the problem, but I'd be willing to try if the DMM would like that
sort of help. Me, I just want a working free browser in Debian that I can
use to talk with my bank account ;-)


Sorry for the longish posting, but it's been a while, and there _were_ a
few bugs to report...

Luck,

Dwarf
--
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