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Re: xinetd is a viable inet-superserver



On Wed, Nov 28, 2007 at 08:06:13PM +0100, Klaus Ethgen wrote:

> Am Mi den 28. Nov 2007 um 11:51 schrieb Pierre Habouzit:
> > > (May there are a debconf question?)

> >   No I won't use debconf here, because it's definitely the most viable
> > way to use xinetd nowadays. Though the next upload will document that
> > fact completely in the README.Debian
> [...]
> >   I don't want to use debconf. It's an overkill.

> Pardon? debconf overkill? This is right the correct place for it as it
> change the basic way the package work completely.

There are three principal cases in which debconf is useful:

- you have a setting to configure for which there is no reasonable default
- you have a setting to configure that it's useful to allow preseeding for
  on initial install
- you have an error message to display *conditionally* on upgrade.

I don't think any of these apply to xinetd.  Debconf should not be used as a
substitute for either NEWS.Debian or for doing the hard work of figuring out
the correct reasonable default.  Doing so wastes translators' time and
users' disk space.

> There we have completely other understanding of. xinetd is a replacement
> (with its own configuration). Using the inetd.conf you have no benefit
> of using the plain old one. The compat mode is only good for migration.

Well, no, the other benefit is that you actually get integration with
update-inetd, which is how packages declare themselves to the
inet-superserver.  But I'm not overly happy with this implementation, xinetd
ought to be providing its own update-inetd script instead.

But even in that case, there would be an upgrade issue on account of the
fact that pre-existing entries in /etc/inetd.conf corresponding to packages
that have previously called update-inetd would not be handled automatically
upon installation of xinetd; or that they would at best suddenly become
active when those packages are upgraded, rather than when xinetd is
upgraded.

-- 
Steve Langasek                   Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer                   to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer                                    http://www.debian.org/
slangasek@ubuntu.com                                     vorlon@debian.org



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