Re: Cinnamon environment now available in testing

[Matthias Klumpp <matthias@tenstral.net>]

2014-09-05 19:52 GMT+02:00 Zack Weinberg <zackw@panix.com>:
> Steve Langasek wrote:
>
>> No, that's not the true package relationship.  There's no reason that
>> you should always get this added service by default when you install
>> a system with non-systemd init that doesn't need logind.  Making this
>> a recommends would be a workaround for bad metadata in the
>> libpam-systemd package; we should fix that problem at its source the
>> right way.
>
>
> I filed bug #746578 against libpam-systemd back in May; I believe the
> proposed change (depend on systemd-shim | systemd-sysv rather than the other
> way around) addresses most if not all of this class of issues.  It is
> currently WONTFIXed.
>
> Abstractly, I believe the ideal situation would be for all init systems in
> the archive to be *completely* co-installable, with /sbin/init a symlink
> under control of the administrator; under no circumstances would installing
> or upgrading any package change that symlink.  (It follows that systems
> upgraded from wheezy might wind up with systemd _installed_, but sysvinit
> would remain the active init until the local admin changed things manually.
> Obviously this would need to be documented.)
>
> This would necessitate that all packages depending on specific functionality
> from the _running_ init be capable of detecting its absence at runtime and
> gracefully degrading their behavior.  That may be nontrivial, but I believe
> that we need it _anyway_ so that when a system is deliberately converted
> from one init to another it continues to function more-or-less correctly
> until next rebooted.
>
> Unfortunately, it may be too late for this for jessie :-(
I did not test this, but AFAIK PID 1 can not be a symlink...
Cheers,
    Matthias