Bug#52914: libc6: postinst fails if '/etc/init.d/foo restart' not supported
Package: libc6
Version: 2.1.2-8
Architecture: sparc, if it matters
On upgrading my stable Debian/Sparc box to unstable, I ran into the following:
libc6's postinst says:
Name Service Switch has changed in the C Library.
Running programs may not be able to do NSS lookups until they are
restarted (for services such as ssh, this can affect your ability to
login).
Note: restarting sshd should not affect any existing connections.
The services restarted (if present) are:
smail, sendmail, exim, ssh, netbase, apache, boa, nis, and proftpd.
If other services begin to fail mysteriously after this upgrade,
it may be necessary to restart them too.
Do you wish to Restart Services? [Y/n]
If you select 'Y' and one of the services doesn't restart, the postinst
bombs out and libc6 is left in the 'unconfigured' state, which is a bit
drastic for such a critical package.
[In this case, it fell over because ssh 1.2.22-2 doesn't support
/etc/init.d/ssh restart, only stop|start|reload...]
I think it would be a bit nicer to allow the user to choose whether to
abort the upgrade if a service fails to restart.
Also, it might be a good idea to do a stop-then-start rather than restart,
since I think that's more likely to be supported by elderly init.d scripts.
Peter Maydell
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