Bug#500786: on upgrade crash, udev installation may remain in an inconsistent state

[md@Linux.IT (Marco d'Itri)]

This looks like an interesting issue.
Does it have a solution?

----- Forwarded message from Ole Marggraf <marggraf@astro.uni-bonn.de> -----

Subject: Bug#500786: on upgrade crash, udev installation may remain in an
	inconsistent state
From: Ole Marggraf <marggraf@astro.uni-bonn.de>

Package: udev
Version: 0.125-6
Severity: normal


Hi,

I am just about to upgrade a number of machines from an older lenny
installation (about 6-8 weeks old) to the recentmost (lenny) packages.
This includes upgrading udev from 0.114-2 to 0.125-6, plus some 700
other packages.

On at least two machines, I encountered the following: The upgrade has
crashed the machine (somewhere in the pam upgrade, I think, when
restarting services, but this is of no importance here). The point is,
udev is unpacked, and /sbin/udevtrigger is already removed. However,
when the system crashes, the udev init script is still the old one,
referring to the non-existent udevtrigger. On rebooting, this leaves the
system in a very ugly state if the user does not know that all he
needs to do is to move the new /etc/init.d/udev.dkpg-new to
/etc/init.d/udev and reboot again (this just for the record in case
anybody may need it).

So, you know the packaging a lot better than I do, I suppose. Is it
not possible to upgrade the udev init script at an earlier time in the
installation process (maybe immediately after unpacking) instead of
waiting for the general package setup phase? This would greatly reduce
the chances that a crash in any of the other packages' upgrades leaves
the udev installation in such an inconsistent state...

I do not know whether this is just relevant for lenny-to-lenny
updates, or whether it may also occur on upgrading from etch to lenny.

Cheers,

Ole

----- End forwarded message -----

-- 
ciao,
Marco