Re: jessie-updates gone
Hi Ben,
On Wed, Apr 03, 2019 at 12:23:46AM +0100, Ben Hutchings wrote:
> Debian LTS is a team within Debian. It's separate from the main
> security team and the stable release managers, but it is no less part
> of Debian.
Sure, I do understand that. My employer is one of the LTS sponsors.
However what I am saying is, there are clearly quite a few users of
Debian who were surprised and confused about jessie-updates going
away. I think that means those users also did not know that they
transitioned from relying on the security team and release managers
to the LTS team.
Clearly the LTS team cannot provide the same level of support, so
wouldn't you agree that it is important that users realise when they
go from one state to another?
> The transition to extended support by the LTS team has always been
> announced, in any case:
Absolutely, but these users did not read those announcements, or
else I think they wouldn't have been so confused by jessie-updates
going away.
The majority of end user posts about this that I have seen have not
been saying, "this is annoying, just make it stop", they have been
more like, "what is going on? Is my sources.list incorrect?" i.e.
I'm not convinced these posts are coming from people who read any of
the various announcement emails.
I've supported a couple of my own users with questions about the apt
update errors and none them knew what LTS was or that they had
already been using it for nearly a year. From their point of view
while "apt update" continued to work without complaint, they were
enjoying full Debian support. I have a feeling this wrong impression
may be quite common.
So, various people are asking for an empty jessie-updates to be put
back because of all the confused users and the need to make changes
to sources.list. I am asking:
a) doesn't that suggest that many or all of these users missed that
they transitioned to LTS back in June 2018, and only noticed that
something was amiss now that jessie-updates has gone?
b) if in future Debian does leave an empty stretch-updates then
doesn't that mean that these users will continue being blissfully
unaware for an even longer period of time?
c) if getting warnings from "apt update" does seem to be an
effective final way to reach such users, would it be a good idea
to find a way to have apt tell them about their transition into
LTS?
Personally I'm not bothered either way about whether
"<distro>-updates" remains something that can be in sources.list
without causing update errors, but I am more concerned that a lot of
users may have ended up transitioning to LTS without realising that,
and wonder if there is any good way to help reduce that.
Cheers,
Andy
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