Re: Bug#162120: Support #162120
On Wed, 9 Jul 2003 09:50:07 -0500, Steve Langasek <vorlon@netexpress.net> said:
> On Tue, Jul 08, 2003 at 03:27:50PM -0500, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
>> On Tue, 8 Jul 2003 12:08:38 -0700, Chris Waters <xtifr@debian.org>
>> said:
>>
>> > On Tue, Jul 08, 2003 at 06:29:33PM +0200, Thomas Hood wrote:
>> >> Second, propose a change to policy such that it explicitly
>> >> forbid the recreation of configuration files that the admin has
>> >> deleted. This idea was rejected by AJT before and presumably
>> >> will be again. However, you might be able to get the proposal
>> >> accepted.
>>
>> > Some packages may require a config file, in which case, I think
>> > they would be justified in recreating it.
>> Eh? Suppose I do echo "" > config file, you are going to blow my
>> changes away and "recreate the configuration as the package deems
>> fit"?
>> Packages ought not to rely on the configuration file to provide
>> sane defaults.
> Is this in policy somewhere?
Umm. Have we totally lost the ability to add 2 + 2 together,
without it being in policy? Since users are allowed to change
configuration files, packages need to be very liberal in what they
expect.
And if you can see, I said ought, not must.
> I know that applications must not depend on environment variables
> for sane defaults, but I don't remember anything about not being
> able to depend on config files for this. I think depending on a
> config file for sane defaults is much better than heavily patching
> an upstream binary for the same effect.
At this point, we are indeed supposed to preserve user
changes. User changes can be echo "" > /etc/filename, or rm
/etc/filename.
Now, there is no constraint on how the package behaves when
faced with a malformed configuration file -- exiting with a
diagnostic is not unacceptable.
> As to the question of whether rm /etc/config/file should be
> respected, c.f. the behavior of update-rc.d (a policy-mandated
> interface), which regards the total absence of symlinks as an
> indication that they should be re-added.
But one ma delete all but one symlink anf not have them
replaced, or delete a file from /etc/init/d and not have symlinks
recreated.
> There's lots of precedent for this sort of config file handling, and
> I'm not sure that it's particularly beneficial to require packages
> to respect the removal of a config file.
Packages already have to deal with effectively removing
configuration files -- (the echo "" device). How is it so different
to also expect them to respect non existent files? (even if the
response is making the package a nop)
manoj
--
Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org> <http://www.debian.org/%7Esrivasta/>
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