How Should MTAs Upgrade?
The recent DEBCONFmacroDEBCONF problem with exim upgrades brings up this
question. Yes, I know it's Sid, unstable, and things can break. In such a
case, though, do they have to break?
What happened in this case was those not accepting all the maintainer's files
(and having to start over) got the malformed macro error and were now missing
a valid configuration. Before knowing the full extent of this problem,
messages began streaming to never-never-land. I finally had the sense to shut
down fetchmail and downgrade exim4 to testing until I find out how to use the
"adapted" macro mode.
Now, what if the upgrade would say:
1. Shutting down found mail fetcher fetchmail or alternative.
2. Shutting down exim4
3. Upgrading exim4
4. Uh-oh, cannot run with the old config files right now--better do something
about this. Do not restart the daemons until resolving this!
Outside chance of minimal data loss at most.
If one successfully upgraded, i.e. accepted the new files:
5. Succesfful. Your old configuration saved to ....
6. Restarting exim4
7. Restarting mail fetcher fetchmail ...
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