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Re: Configuration management goal



Le Wed, Oct 21, 1998 at 01:44:43PM +0100, Ian Jackson écrivait:
> In Debian, running the postinst script _is_ configuring the package.
> If you want to install a package but not to configure it, use
> dpkg --unpack.

Yes, my first mail had no sense if we consider it that way... let me
explain a bit more.

Actually the package is configured when the postinst successfully
ran. Well. But in the postinst we can do 2 sorts of things :
- automatic job that don't need user intervention (setting up account,
  compiling some stuff (ie for latex), creating symlinks, or whatever)
  that will probably act on files that are not in /etc.
- configuration job : in that part we may be able to ask questions
  an to interactively create file in /etc.

And it's the second part that we want to change in order to allow 
non-interactive installation. But if we do not clearly
separate the first part from the second the only way of
non-interactive install will be to use the configuration database.

If we can separate it, we'll be able to have different way of
non-interactive installation like the one I mentionned :
- first unpack and launch the first-part of postinst (that must
  be non-interactive)
- then do not launch the second part but simply copy /etc from a
  machine that would be the model.

=> this is really not standardized and may not be a good solution
but it may also be simpler than to create a registry with
all the configuration.

But if separating these jobs will break older dpkg and create too
many complications, then consider this idea as bad.

Cheers,
-- 
Hertzog Raphaël ¤ 0C4CABF1 ¤ http://www.mygale.org/~hra/


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