Re: Proposal: Automatic query servicing for dpkg installation scripts
Andreas Degert <ad@papyrus.hamburg.com> wrote:
> There are a lot of packages with config files that can't be generated
> using some simple questions (on my systems packages like autofs,
> samba, lprng, X11, apt, dosemu, svgatextmode, netstd, pcmcia-cs, sane,
> samba, sudo, tetex, wine). This would have to be solved too if you
> want it to scale.
samba: I don't see why
autofs: not installed on this machine, will check later
lprng: I don't see why
X11: already not handled very well in postinst
apt: I don't see why
dosemu: I don't see why
svgatextmode: not installed on this machine
netstd: I don't see why
pcmcia-cs: not installed on this machine
sane: not installed on this machine
sudo: I don't see why
tetex: I don't see why
wine: I don't know enough
dosemu is kind of interesting, because you'd like to be able to
install *into* the dosemu file space, and currently we don't
address that.
Other than that, we'd also need to solve the problem of batch
administration (reflecting config changes on many machines), though
I recall that we have at least one package which already does that.
Finally, install time isn't the only logical time where we'd want
to tackle config issues: run time is another time that makes
sense (though some changes can be made permanent only by root, and
some configuration is security related so not available to the
random user). A lot of this is just generating good error messages,
where people can see them. Sometimes it's including references to
the right docs. Sometimes it's making a config tool (when there's
too many options to easily grasp by studying).
> If you want upgrades to scale, you have also to answer the
> old/new-configfile question by the query service (and the answer is
> only valid for one upgrade, for the next upgrade the choice might
> be different), and there must be a possibility to supply the merged
> configfile.
yes.
> When the machines have a similar but not identical configuration, for
> example hardware differences, answers must be supplied from a general,
> and a machine-specific database.
yes.
And you have to have a way of addressing the case where you got something
wrong.
--
Raul
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