RE: Auto. security upgrades

[arto.astala@nokia.com]

Thierry Laronde <thierry.laronde@polynum.com> 02 Mar, 2000 12:38
> On Thu, Mar 02, 2000 at 09:59:35AM +0200, arto.astala@nokia.com wrote:
> > [...]
> > Maybe, if a prompt could be arranged...
> > It should default to leaving the package on hold, however.
> > 
> 
> Well, there are two problems :
> 
> 1) It's much more difficult to change the internals of dpkg 
> than to use some
> tricks in order to implement these "security updates". So, 
> with my proposal,
> I'm not quite sure that a prompt would be in some way feasible ;

Maybe that can be arranged by definition:
- if
   dpkg or dselect or apt or swim (or ...) somewhere near
   the end complains about dependencies that cannot be met
   for packages on hold
  then
   we may be able to modify the message to indicate that
   this may mean that a security update is needed

> 2) You're right about the primacy of the admin's decisions. 
> But perhaps the
> solution proposed is not a problem because a package tagged 
> "hold" would be
> simply ignored, whether there are conflicts or not.

The situation seems to be slightly complicated by the fact
that we have several tools and combinations of tools to do
basically the same job. Have you checked dpkgV2 spec? Will
this be any easier then?

If we find that there is at least one tool or combination of
tools that does the job then we can recommend that. Then users
and admins can take this info in consideration when selecting
their tools and planning their work procedures.

t.aa