Policy Weekly Issue #4/11: UUCP-locking of devices

[Christian Schwarz <schwarz@monet.m.isar.de>]

Topic 11: UUCP-locking of devices

STATE: INPUT
REF:   cf. bug #11094 and #10575

The FSSTND (as well as the FHS draft) specifies how programs have to lock
UUCP devices. Unfortunately, the locking mechanism has several flaws.

To solve this dilemma, Fabrizio Polacco built a library for device locking
(liblockdev) which is fully compliant to the FSSTND requirements but also
solves some problems of the locking mechanism.

I suggest to change policy so that every Debian package has to use
liblockdev to lock/unlock devices.

Any comments are appreciated.

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