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Re: Perl postinst script running external commands



Hi,

Russell Coker:
> Are you sure that it's possible to fix it in such a fashion?  This might work 
> for Perl (I have never used the Perl interface so I don't know how it works), 

Perl could do it, no problem.

> but would not work for calling Debconf from Bash.
> 
You're right -- bash lacks this feature. However, the context of the
original question specifically mentioned Perl (or so I remember -- anyway,
it used backticks, and nobody would use backticks in bash just for their
side effects of running a program ;-).

> I think that the way to solve this is to not have a file handle remain open.  

Right. As I said, separating the question-asking from the execution-doing
phase of the script (explicitly closing the connection) would do that.

> Debconf could easily run in a client-server manner and the client could 
> connect to a unix domain socket.

Unfortunately, the current protocol is too stateful for that -- this
idea would insert a client process between the display system and the
configuree, but it won't change the real problem -- the various shell
functions would still need a shared file descriptor. Hmmm... you could do
it with a pair of FIFOs in the file system, though. I'll have to think
about that.

-- 
Matthias Urlichs     |     noris network AG     |     http://smurf.noris.de/



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