On 00-09-29 Lindsay Haisley wrote:
> Thus spake Christian Kurz on Fri, Sep 29, 2000 at 03:43:49PM CDT
> > > My original post specified Debian 2.2. The numerals got stripped
> > > somewhere along the way. Sorry if the usage on this field was out
> > > of spec. I wasn't sure what to specify since I don't know what
> > > package did the deed.
> >
> > Then you can stil assign it to the package general so that people
> > get notified and give as version-numer 2.2.
> Would you please see to it that the right information gets to whoever needs
> to see it, whether or not this was done correctly? If you want people to
This information is just going to the right people.
> follow this format for non-specific problem reporting then it should be
> explained on <http://www.debian.org/Bugs/Reporting>. It's not.
And where's there written that you should use the package unknown if you
had problems with the upgrade in general?
> > > I updated packages using apt from within dselect, auto-installing
> > > everything that needed to be updated via transfers from the debian
> > > ftp site. Lots of package install scripts asked a lot of
> > > questions, as usual, and I kept a record on another virtual
> > > terminal of those messages which appeared to be
> >
> > Apperead? How can you say if something appers to be important or
> > not? I see no one do this automatically. This has always to be done
> > by manual reading.
> I read with my eyes, not by hand :) Every time I was presented with a
> notice which required my attention and some sort of input or keypress to
> continue I read it thoroughly. If it indicated some action that needed to
Well, I wonder then how you run into this situation, because as I said
now for the third time, your passwd gets only changed, when you as the
admin decide to do so.
> > > mission-critical to the upgrade. At no point do I remember being
> > > asked if I wanted to overwrite any information in /etc/passwd. I
> > > know that the mysql
> >
> > Look at the code of base-passwd.postinst and see what's done in it.
> > You will also notice that update-passwd gets only executed if the
> > admin who does the upgrade says y at the prompt. Otherwise no
> > changes will be done.
> It looks as though this is the guilty party!
> System entries (or any other entries) in /etc/passwd which do not relate to
> installed packages or which are not fundamental to the operation of the OS
> should never be mucked with by >any< script of this nature. The /etc/passwd
How often should I write you again, that the script update-passwd get's
_ONLY_ executed, when _YOU_ as the admin, decide to do so. While
upgrading passwd you will get the following message:
|Checking if your system passwd, shadow and group files are correct...
|
|It looks like I need to make some changes to your system. Without those
|changes some packages might not work correctly. The list of changes are
|listed above. For more documentation on the Debian account policies
|please read /usr/share/doc/base-passwd/README.
|
|Should I update your system? [Y/n]
If you enter y at this prompt, update-passwd will change the passwd as
_you_ told it to do this. If you enter n at this prompt, it will leave
you passwd alone and print the following message:
|Okay, I will not update your system. If you want to make this update later
|please check the update-passwd utility.
update-passwd doesn't change the passwd otherwise, only if _you_ call it
_manually_ from the command line and then you should have read the
manpage before.
> fashion. Although I may have run the update script, it's very broken for it
> to "fix" this entry, especially considering that Debian doesn't even offer a
> Majordomo package! I would suggest that the entry for majordomo be striken
Then submit a bug for the package so that the master-file for it gets
changed but don't blame debian for this, because _you_ told the script
to update/change your passwd.
> > > circulstances should any package, update-passwd or any other, muck with
> > > passwd file entries which are unrelated to the system or to currently
> > > installed packages. Period! While Debian may advise the use of a certain
> >
> > When do you understand the update-passwd gets _only_ executed when _you_
> > as the admin make this decision and either call it from the commandline
> > or say y in the postinst-script?
> I make the decision to drive my car, too, but I don't expect it to drive me
> into a utility pole unless I very explicitly steer it in that direction.
> What the update script did was broken, whatever my answer may have been to
> the install question.
It was not broken! Read above what I wrote about it.
> > > A search through the Debian package list in dselect for
> > > "majordomo" and for the partial words "major" and "domo" turns up
> > > nothing, and I just tried it
> >
> > Hm, then the packages has not only been removed in woody, but also
> > potato. If you upgraded, you had slink and slink contained a
> > majordomo-package, which you will find in the package list of slink,
> > if they didn't remove it there also.
> This is all the more reason to remove the majordomo entry from
> passwd.master.
Then submit a matching bug report.
> Majordomo was in non-free in hamm. I gave away my slink disks so I don't
> know about that. It was probably removed due to security concerns, of which
> there are a few, or possibly becuase of its license. Its proper use with
It was not removed for security concerns, only due to some license
problems which have first been notified at this time.
> > How can you say that you saw no problems after the upgrade,
> > when a user notices after a day that the mailserver is broken?
> The mail server was NOT broken, nor was my qmail list server (ezmlm). The
> majordomo list server >was< broken (mail server != list server). I said
And this can't be noticed after an upgrade?
> > Please
> > get your facts right, before you blame debian for things that debian is
> > not responsible for.
> Excuse me? Let me repeat what I said. NO package or update script has any
> business changing entries in /etc/passwd which do not relate to the
> functionality of the OS or of installed packages, ESPECIALLY if such an
> entry relates to a subsystem which isn't even supported or offered as
> package by Debian.
> This is a big, black, Debian bug. Deal with it, Please!
When do you understand, that there's no blackbox and there's a standard
passwd for debian-systems that normally doesn'get changed by the admin,
only with some new users added or removed. And the update-passwd script
only makes it changes to the passwd to make it identically with the
debian-standard, if you as the admin request that. There's no blackbox.
This is fully up to the admin of the box to decide what he wants to do
with the passwd. And I know about this, because I also run a modified
passwd here and would have noticed such a behaviour earlier. And I
notified no such behaviuour here, because I decided that update-passwd
should never run here (because I don't call it manually or enter y at
the prompt mentioned above).
Ciao
Christian
--
Debian Developer and Quality Assurance Team Member
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