Attitude!
Look, Christian, I'm sure you're an excellent programmer and obviously have
an ego and attitude to match, but the logic of this issue is inescapable.
You probably consider me just another clueless American Debian user, but my
point is absolutely correct, and you and the rest of the Debian qa people,
as well as the developer(s) responsible for the issue, need to wake up and
smell the coffee.
Thus spake Christian Kurz on Fri, Sep 29, 2000 at 09:34:17AM CDT
>
> > The home dir for user majordom is as recommended by a
> > number of people in the qmail community, and the list server was working
> > flawlessly.
>
> Do you think, we care about things said by the qmail community? There's
> a FHS, that is important and that we follow. Other decision are up to
> the maintainer.
This is TOTALLY beside the point! There are excellent reasons for the
Debian file heirarchy standard which I appreciate, but this issue has
nothing to do with the FHS.
The point is that, regardless of the Debian standard, the only entity which
should have the authority to >enforce< the FHS with regard to a facility
such as majordomo is the package that installs and configures that facility.
Other packages which depend on it or are related to it may have an advisory
responsibility, and an advisory responsibility only with regard to any
deviation from the Debian FHS of the installed facility. Enforcement of the
FHS >after the fact< by an unrelated facility is completely out of line, and
is almost guaranteed to cause needless breakage. If it ain't broke, don't
fix it!!!
As you are well aware, Debian, Linux and Unix in general, support two
different methods of installing software. Most versions of Unix, including
all Linux distros, have a packaging system which must obey strict rules with
regard to the FHS to maintain overall system integration. On the other
hand, Unix, including Linux, supports distribution-independent installs from
compiled sources via the sdk which may or may not conform to the FHS of a
particular distribution, and it's required and expected that these can be
made to work properly. If I install something outside the package
management system which doesn't conform to Debian's (or any other distro's)
FHS, I can't expect any dependent packages to install and run without some
work, and I don't. On the other hand, if I install something from source
outside the FHS, and I can make it work, I damn sure expect the package
management system (and all packages thereunder) to leave it the hell alone!
I hate Microsoft! MS OS software and Windows apps routinely break stuff
when they install and make fundamental changes to system configuration
without asking or telling. The operating system and the company are
arrogant and rude. MS tech support people are often arrogant, rude and
clueless as well. Please don't go there! Keep Debian and Linux in the
sunshine!
> > My majordomo lists (one of which is commercial) have been down all day until
> > one astute list subscriber wrote me personally with the details of the
> > bounce message she received and I was able to spot the problem.
>
> What? You administrate a mailing-list and need one day to find out that
> the setup is broken? I'm happy that I'm not subscribed to any of the
> list you administrate, because I expect a mailing list admin to notice
> any error after some (normally 3-4 hours).
This is crap. I didn't ask for your opinion here, and it's not welcome.
The point is that I was inconvenienced and embarassed by the rudeness of the
Debian upgrade which made a completely unauthorized change to a fundamental
system resource without telling me, and broke stuff that one of my customers
depends on and pays for. What >you< expect from a mailing list admin is
completely beside the point.
As it happens, my response time on the problem wasn't really much longer
than this. I worked on the upgrade until early morning, went to bed and
slept late. It was about 8 hours after I got up that I was made aware of
the problem. The mail system and perl worked - I checked that before
knocking off for the night. Majordomo depends only on these two, so I had
no reason to expect a problem. That a Linux distribution should have broken
something at so fundamental a level was pretty bad, and totally unexpected
given the level of quality I've come to expect from Debian. That you should
try to defend this, and so rudely at that, absolutely blows my mind!
--
Lindsay Haisley | "Everything works | PGP public key
FMP Computer Services | if you let it" | available at
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