Re: Please review debconf template important note on vidalia pkg
Dererk wrote:
> The whole idea is to let the user clear that he/she will have to
> restart their X session after this message (since it will be output
> only if changes have been made to user profile/groups _only_)
How do you mean - is there a debconf question that can lead to those
changes being made? If so, *that's* where this information should go.
> Template: vidalia/groupchanges
> Type: note
Debconf notes are deprecated. The information almost always belongs
somewhere else - putting it here usually means that it bothers people
who don't need to read it while simultaneously being hard to refer
back to for people who do need to read it. For instance, you tell us
this will only be shown if changes have been made to user accounts.
What happens if the admin installs vidalia first, then makes those
changes later, and never gets a chance to see this debconf template?
Last time we saw them, your debconf templates already had a pointer
towards the vidalia README.Debian, and that's a perfect place for
Debian-specific setup hints like this.
> _Description: Important! Please restart your X session for applying changes!
Please don't shout like that.
_Description: Restart X sessions to apply permission changes
> *nix systems gets user profile only once across sessions life and it happens
> when you log into it
"Across sessions" is exactly what it isn't. Fixing the English before
I complain about the content:
On Unixlike systems, user and group privileges for a session are set
once at login.
But this isn't a fact about vidalia, and strictly speaking it isn't
even true: if for instance I've just been added to the "sudo" group, I
don't need to restart my X session - I can just go
$ su - $USER
$ sudo shred /dev/sda
...and bingo, I've destroyed my system, because "su -" gives me a new
login shell session with the new group privileges.
> This means that any change you may have produced to any currently logged user
> will not be seen until you restart their X or tty sessions
TTY sessions? They wouldn't be entitled to expect to be able to use
Vidalia from the console anyway, would they?
> IMPORTANT NOTE: If you have just added any user to 'debian-tor' group it's
> very important that you restart their sessions BEFORE starting Vidalia
> .
> Otherwise, communication between Tor and Vidalia WILL be broken
IMPORTANT NOTE: if you have to attach a sign begging readers not to
skip this bit, it means you need to trim some "TRIVIAL IRRELEVANCE"
paragraphs.
Didn't you say that it knows for sure that the admin *has* just added
a user to the "debian-tor" group? So why the "may have/if you have"?
And how did the admin know that the debian-tor group was the correct
group to use? Did they read it somewhere in the Debian-specific
documentation? If so, that's what needs amending, not the debconf
templates.
My "fixed" version of the text would be a single paragraph:
On Unixlike systems, user and group privileges for a session are set
once at login. When you add currently logged-in users to the
"debian-tor" group, they will need to restart their X session before
they will be able to start running Vidalia.
But please don't put this in a debconf note.
--
JBR with qualifications in linguistics, experience as a Debian
sysadmin, and probably no clue about this particular package
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