Re: Possible bug in devfs package and bugs reporting in general
On Monday July 07, 2003 at 03:30
Vesselin Kostadinov <Vesselin.Kostadinov@Beonic.com> wrote:
> apt-get devfs
>
> So apt downloaded and configured it. I thought I was done with
> it and I can concentrate on the other (more important to me) packages.
> Not so. After "become-an-expert-in-devfs" exercise
> I figured out that I had to recompile the kernel to support
> devfs. Everything worked fine afterwards, but does "Debian -
> when you have better things to do than fix a system" sound
> familiar?
Yes it does. Debian is the most stable system I have worked with.
Everything works the way it is supposed to, the first time.
>
> I was thinking that in an ideal world the configuration of
> a package would fail if at least one of it's prerequisites
> (like certain kernel functionality) is not met. This would
> (1) tell the user what is wrong and (2) leave the package
> in "Failed-config" state so all packages that depend on this
> one would not be installed until the issue is resolved.
>
I havn't used the debian kernel packaging system yet, I still rely on
kernel.org for my stuff. I'm not sure if any of Debian's binary kernels
even support devfs. It is still experimental, which goes against Debian
principle that it should work. Period. All the time for everyone.
> I wanted to report a bug titled "Configuration of devfs does
> not fail when the kernel is not compiled with devfs support".
> This sounds more like fact-of-life than like a bug so I
> decided to ask these questions:
>
I have at least one each of:
2.4.18-bf24
2.4.20 from kernel.org
2.4.21 from kernel.org
Because devfs is still experimental, I understand that it is my
responsibility to understand it if I want to use it. I didn't know about
it until I was reading through my kernel config.
> 1. Should I report this as a bug? It is a bug in a sense
> that a required functionality does not work "out-of-the-box".
> However, strictly speaking, there is no bug in devfs package -
> it is up to the poor user to figure out what is wrong with
> the rest of the system.
Then the 'poor user' shouldn't be running experimental software. I
actually wish that dependencies wern't so damn strong. Getting qmail
working the first time was a pain, because it is not available in binary
form. Short story: installing from source wouldn't allow me to remove
sendmail (or was it exim?) because a lot of packages needed an MTA, but
apt didn't think I had one.
>
> 2. Is there a manual/gude/faq that already explains what
> exactly is a bug and that should be RTFM before asking
> question 1?
>
I don't know, I've never really encountered a bug in Debian.
--
-johann koenig
now playing: Ace Troubleshooter - Tonight
Today is Boomtime, the 41st day of Confusion in the YOLD 3169
http://mental-graffiti.com/rt/
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