Re: Solutions for the Apache upgrade hell
Hi Arno,
* Arno Töll <arno@debian.org> [140713 13:25]:
> [..]
>
> To summarize the bug reports: The problem is, that Apache package
> maintainers at that time decided, that third party modules shall depend
> on apache2.2-common, by guaranteeing ABIs remain stable as long as the
> package name does not change. [..] Unfortunately,
> apache2.2-common also contains conffiles and configuration file handling
> in postinst/postrm ...
>
> I spent a lot of time to properly transition to a new state with
> conffiles/configuration separated from ABI handling, and this works well
> enough for regular updates by now.
>
> Unfortunately it turns out, that /a lot/ of people use "aptitude
> --purge-unused safe-upgrade", or the apt equivalent "apt-get
> dist-upgrade --purge" which causes dpkg to purge the user's
> configuration, in particular enabled modules, during the upgrade because
> apache2.2-common disappears in that step. Those people end up with
> effects as described in the bugs outlined above, for example with
> incomplete installations because our maintainer scripts had no chance to
> properly detect the state of the /etc/apache2 directory before the upgrade.
>
> This gives us three possibilities which all have unwanted side effects
> (unless you come up with an idea that all of us makes happy). I'm
> writing to this list in hope that someone has a very smart idea to make
> everyone happy, or express your support for either alternative to give
> us some insights what people think would be the best alternative.
>
> * Ignore the problem, and refer to the manpage of aptitude without
> proper fix etc. which clearly says "THIS OPTION CAN CAUSE DATA LOSS! DO
> NOT USE IT UNLESS YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING". The bad news is, we
> can't tell this before it's too late, such as in a NEWS file - and we
> know, everybody reads release notes too, right?
I'm expressing support for this, and/or your second option.
Any non-trivial setup will need config changes anyway, and any sane
person already uses version control for /etc + config management for
such setups.
C.
--
,''`. Christian Hofstaedtler <zeha@debian.org>
: :' : Debian Developer
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