Re: Bug#128795: suck: Incomplete uninstall

[Paul Martin <pm@debian.org>]

reassign 128795 logrotate
retitle 128795 Missing directory in glob causes error, even with missingok
thanks

On Mon, Jan 14, 2002 at 03:47:26PM +0100, Tollef Fog Heen wrote:

> I disagree, obviously.  Taking this to debian-devel, since I doubt we
> can agree.  Therefore quoting a fair bit as well.

You cropped some relevant bits too.

> | On Sat, Jan 12, 2002 at 08:32:02PM -0800, Ross Boylan wrote:
> | > On Sat, Jan 12, 2002 at 08:51:20PM +0100, Tollef Fog Heen wrote:
> | 
> | > > | I uninstalled suck (apt-get remove) but it seems some cron jobs are
> | > > | still hanging around.  Here's the log:
> | > > 
> | > > Uhm, no.  It's actually just a logrotate hanging around, which is
> | > > should, according to policy.
> | > 
> | > Right; it was the logrotate entry.  logrotate was the cron job, which
> | > obviously needs to continue.
> | 
> | > > I am reassigning this bug against logrotate since it shouldn't report
> | > > errors for files which have ?missingok? enabled.
> | 
> | Unfortunately, this only applies to files for which there is no
> | wildcard. The error is reported *before* the missingok has been parsed.
> 
> The documentation does not say _anything_ about that.  It says that
> 
>        missingok
>               If the log file is missing, go on to  the  next  one  without
>               issuing an error message. See also nomissingok.
> 
> /var/log/suck/*log
> 
> is missing and the missingok directive is present.  That means that it
> should _not_ issue an error message.

> Why would there be a missingok there if it didn't have any effect?

The documentation does not specify the behaviour where the *directory*
containing the wildcard is missing. With the directory available but
empty, logrotate is silent.

[snipped was how the user got into this situation]

The only other possibility is that the /var/log/suck directory was
empty at the point 'dpkg --remove' was run, and dpkg deleted the
directory as it was empty. This could happen if suck had been installed
and immediately removed.

On reflection, I acknowledge this is not a suck bug.

I could amend logrotate's manpage (eg. adding a BUGS section). It may
be too late for woody, though.

If it's deemed a programming bug, to fix it would require a complete
rewrite of the configuration file parser, which definitely wouldn't get
into woody.

-- 
Paul Martin <pm@debian.org>