Re: Release update

[Zefram <zefram@fysh.org>]

Patrice Fortier wrote:
>I had updates for ssh, portmap and nfs-common last week, and
>each update restarted its service even if I had disabled them
>(update-rc.d -f xxx remove).
...

All of this rather resembles Bug#176009 (cron script starts a stopped lpd)
which I submitted over a year ago (just adding to the list of gripes in
this thread).  We clearly have a general problem with network daemons,
not just a problem with a few specific ones.

Therefore, I suggest that we separate each of these daemon packages into
two, one that provides the daemon software and a separate one to run it.
That way those of us who want to install a daemon and use it in our own
way would not be hampered by someone's idea of how the daemon should
normally be run.  And where the daemon is packaged with a client,
installing the client wouldn't cause an unwanted daemon to run.

Example: the "ssh" package would, as now, provide both the ssh client
and ssh server, but wouldn't contain an init script.  There would be a
separate "ssh-daemon" package, with a dependency on the "ssh" package,
and containing an init script.

Debian should ship with *no* network daemons listening by default.
I'm rather surprised that it hasn't adopted this policy already.