Bug#683838: release-notes: transition: pdksh → mksh
Package: release-notes
Severity: normal
Hi,
Robert asked me to replace pdksh with its successor mksh
in time for the wheezy release, and we’d like it to be
gone in jessie. Right now, pdksh is a transitional package,
and the upgrade might need some sysadmin and/or user effort:
① The sysadmin needs to change all users’ shells from pdksh
to mksh (login with pdksh will still be possible but lack
basic human rights such as tab completion).
② Everyone with #!/bin/pdksh (and possibly #!/bin/ksh which
is update-alternatives managed) scripts should check that
they continue to run with /bin/pdksh aka /bin/lksh (the
compatibility binary in mksh) or, better, port them to run
with /bin/mksh to get all bugfixes (lksh re-introduced a
few “bugs” when legacy behaviour would be needed by user
scripts).
Proposed text, as asked for in the d-d-a mail from Adam,
attached, although it should probably be run through the
l10n-en team first. (And someone should decide whether my
explanation about /bin/{pd,l,m,}ksh from this mail belongs
into it. I found it a bit lengthy already, but us Germans
tend to write convolutedly.)
HTH & HAND,
//mirabilos
-- System Information:
Debian Release: wheezy/sid
APT prefers unreleased
APT policy: (500, 'unreleased'), (500, 'unstable')
Architecture: m68k
Kernel: Linux 3.2.0-3+m68k.1-atari
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/mksh-static
pdksh → mksh transition
───────────────────────
The Public Domain Korn Shell (pdksh) package is being retired
for jessie, the Debian release after wheezy, since pdksh is no
longer maintained and has last seen active development in 1999.
The MirBSD Korn Shell (mksh) package contains its successor.
In Debian wheezy, pdksh is a transitional package using a
variant of mksh built with special compatibility options to
provide a pdksh binary symlink, to give everyone time to check
and, if necessary, adopt any scripts to run with mksh instead;
the compatibility binary behaves a bit more like pdksh in some
areas where mksh or the POSIX standard on the shell have evolved
but still contains bugfixes that may break your scripts if they
make use of the bugs fixed.
However, the compatibility binary is not suitable for interactive
use, so as system administrator, please change the login and/or
interactive shells of users that use pdksh to mksh and suggest
to copy /etc/skel/.mkshrc into their home directories, otherwise
they will find themselves unable to do things like tab completion.
You can do that before the upgrade already, for minimum service
interruption, by manually installing the mksh package then switching
everyone over to it, or defer this to after the upgrade, at which
point /bin/pdksh will no longer be listed in /etc/shells though.
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