Re: openwebmail: Concerns about modifying perl
On Wed, Jun 11, 2003 at 08:01:21PM -0700, Paul Johnson wrote:
> OK, for some reason I got a little creeped out by this instruction
> from the current version of openwebmail (2.01-3)...during
> installation, it spat this out:
>
> Please modify /usr/lib/perl/5.8.0/DB_File.pm by adding
>
> $arg[3] = 0666 unless defined $arg[3];
>
> before the following text (about line 247)
>
> # make recno in Berkeley DB version 2 work like recno in
> version 1
>
>
> For more information, please have a look to the README.Debian
>
> I'm a little bit concerned that any software is asking the user to
> change another package by hand. Secondarily, wouldn't upgrading perl
> later stomp this change? But primarily, is this even a safe change?
> I don't know a whole lot about perl to know if I'm being conned or
> not.
These lines were added in that position to perl upstream after the
release of 5.8.0:
$arg[2] = O_CREAT()|O_RDWR() if @arg >=3 && ! defined $arg[2];
$arg[3] = 0666 if @arg >=4 && ! defined $arg[3];
So I'd say it's a safe change, at least, and it makes sense to me. You
might want to dpkg-divert away DB_File.pm until such time as perl 5.8.1
is uploaded to Debian.
--
Colin Watson [cjwatson@flatline.org.uk]
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