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Re: Should webapp enable an apache module if needed?



This one time, at band camp, sean finney said:
> hi,
> 
> On Tue, May 10, 2005 at 02:54:05PM +0200, Tore Anderson wrote:
> >   In my opinion, the postinst logic should be something like this:
> > 
> >   1) check if the required modules are enabled, if they are: goto 4
> >   2) ask the user permission to enable the required modules, if
> >      permission is not granted: exit gracefully
> >   3) enable the modules
> >   4) ask the user permission to enable the default configuration
> >      required for your webapp to work, if not granted: exit gracefully
> >   5) symlink your config snippet into /etc/apache/conf.d or whereever
> >   6) tell Apache to sanity-check and reload its configuration
> 
> i think that this is pretty reasonable.
> 
> >   The default answer to 2 and 4 should be "no, permission not granted",
> >  so that people with DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive will have their
> >  configuration left untouched.  It would be very nice if the abstracion
> 
> i agree with 2 that if a module is disabled the admin should be prompted
> before it is enabled.  for 4, however, i think the fact that
> the admin is installing the package should already count as a default
> "yes".  of course, there are cases where 4 depends on 2 being yes (any
> app with mod_rewrite will cause apache to fail to restart if mod_rewrite
> is not enabled), in which case the default for 4 should either be "no",
> or whatever the answer to 2 was.

If your app depends on something like modrewrite, your apache.conf
should begin
<IfModule modfoo>
  ...
</IfModule>

So that the admin can install noninteractive and have a functional
apache afterwards, even if the app doesn't work.
-- 
 -----------------------------------------------------------------
|   ,''`.					     Stephen Gran |
|  : :' :					 sgran@debian.org |
|  `. `'			Debian user, admin, and developer |
|    `-					    http://www.debian.org |
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