Re: Filing bug reports in Debian (was Re: Debian Stole My Name!)
Hal Vaughan escreveu:
> It was two years ago. I don't remember all the details, but basically I
> did something like "aptitude update && aptitude upgrade", got a new
> kernel image, and a clobbered menu.lst and it took me hours before I
> got the server up and running. The system worked fine until I
> upgraded, then it wouldn't boot. I had no idea why and finally tracked
> it to a re-written menu.lst.
>
Well, I had assumed that you had manually edited the file, if not for
anything else, at least for the fact that you expected the prompt one
gets when some configuration files in /etc are changed and the a newer
version of a package wants to install a new file. (If the configuration
file has not been changed by the user, then the new file provided by the
package is installed and no questions are asked.)
If you did not change the file and installing a newer kernel made the
file unusable, it was a bug[0]. However, it was not a bug in aptitude or
any other package manager, but of the package responsible for updating
menu.lst. Moreover, it was not a bug because the prompt you expected was
not shown, but because the update-grub script did something wrong.
There are certainly several ways to deal with Grub's menu.lst, but
Debian chose that specific one, basically of automatically updating the
list of installed kernels, while allowing changes in the file, provided
they are done in specific cases. I daresay the automatic updating of the
list of kernels is a good thing and what most people want, and since it
can be turned off, I don't really see much problems with that approach.
It's not the only valid one, for sure, but even if it has caused
problems in some circunstances, this problems can be solved by fixing
the script that was not working correctly.
[0] I say was because it happened two years ago, and most likely has
already been fixed by now.
> But, again, this misses the point: I don't file bug reports because, in
> my experience, they either don't go anywhere, they are closed out as
> quickly as possible with whatever excuse can be drummed up to justify
> it, or, in some cases, the dev can even get insulting.
>
> I did not bring up this bug as an example, someone else did. However,
> since it was brought up, my point was that I had a strong point:
> Someone can use apt or aptitude and has every reason to expect prompts
> before files are overwritten and in this case, there's no prompt or
> warning. That leads to menu.lst being clobbered without notice.
>
However, as I said, it gets overwritten in a valid way. What happend is
that something (which we will probably never know exactly what was)
caused the file to become invalid, and this was a bug. Under normal
circunstances (and I can say that from personal experience, I've updated
kernel packages several times) the automatically updating works fine.
> My point from the start was that, in my experience, bug reports are not
> productive or worth my effort.
Well, if you do not want to report, it is your right. But I'm glad other
people do not share this point of view.
> This one is not a top example, but it
> demonstrates the point and the fact that, when it came up, most of the
> discussion has not been about the file being overwritten but about the
> contents of the file.
>
> That's why I feel many people don't get it and are missing the key
> point.
I do not want this to sound bad, but I think you have unrealistic
expectations about that particular file. It is different from most other
configuration files in /etc. It perhaps could have been handled in a
different way, that's for sure, but it was chosen to work in a specific
way (automatic updates of the contents to include (or removed) installed
(or purged) kernels). While it is not expected that everyone knows that,
it was pointed out where you could understand how Debian handles that
file (and how to change that, should you want to).
--
Eduardo M Kalinowski
eduardo@kalinowski.com.br
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