On Wed, May 06, 2009 at 03:06:34PM +0200, Giacomo A. Catenazzi wrote:
> But system administration is per definition ad hoc solution.
> This is our power. Why we give sources? Also to allow us
> to tweak debian.
This is a utterly poor argument.
I can easily twist it against you by saying "why we give binaries"?
We can just offer sources, system administrators will be able to
compile them.
A distribution is about integration of unrelated softwares and is
about making easier / more manageable tasks for various kind of users,
including system administrators.
> Debian is a distribution, not a complete solution.
> I think we have a different idea of what is debian.
Maybe we have.
> Was this a topic of last meeting of the Italian cabal?
Is there anything useful in raising the "Italian cabal" here? The fact
I'm Italian has nothing to do with my arguments, pretty much as your
nationality has nothing to do with yours.
Or else add smileys if it was meant to be a joke.
> But you are still selling us vapor!
> We still don't understand the problem!
Anyhow, *you* don't understand the problem and you are probably the
only one thinking I'm selling vapor. From other people's replies I
conclude that the problem is quite clear and my vapor was so concrete
that others hinted at technical solutions. But let me spell the
problem out for you, as you are raising the tone of the discussion
with exclamation marks (which was not my intention).
The problem is that our package manager (dpkg) assumes it is in charge
of files which reside on different top-level FHS directories: /usr,
/var, /boot, /bin, /sbin, /lib, /lib64, ...
In a scenario where /usr is remotely exported for NFS mounting, if you
use dpkg on the exporting machine, client machines will get out of
sync. Some files need to be copied over statically and, more
interestingly, maintainer scripts will need to be re-run on client
machines to deliver their side effects to all machines. Also the
status of the dpkg database need to be synced with clients.
My argument is mainly that we should not ask our user to do the above
sync by hand, still claiming we "support" it.
Cheers.
--
Stefano Zacchiroli -o- PhD in Computer Science \ PostDoc @ Univ. Paris 7
zack@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} -<>- http://upsilon.cc/zack/
Dietro un grande uomo c'è ..| . |. Et ne m'en veux pas si je te tutoie
sempre uno zaino ...........| ..: |.... Je dis tu à tous ceux que j'aime
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