Re: Bug#50284: a better apt configuration method
On Mon, 15 Nov 1999, Joey Hess wrote:
> The boot-floppies team is also in need of a simple program to let the user
> configure apt on a new debian install, since they are not going to use
> dselect by default any longer. Ideally, they want it to detect a cd rom in
> the drive, and ask 1 or less questions to get it all set up.
Largely this is what apt-cdrom is for, it is the intended means for
setting up APT for CD installation. All other people are likely best
served by using the default configuration until they are able to change it
to a suitable site.
> - Scanning cd's with apt-cdrom, including multiple cd's.
> - with some basic autodetection done, so the new user
> who has just installed need only insert their cd, run the
> setup program, and everything will just work.
What is your basic autodetection? Guessing from what your script does this
is using /dev/cdrom - this isn't going to work. APT requires a correct
fstab entry to work correctly, which the new installer is going to have to
create. Running apt-cdrom with --no-mount is the worst possible thing you
can do in this situation.
> - Prompting the user if they want to use non-free software, with a
> default of No, to appease RMS.
This won't appease RMS but it might make him feel slightly better.
> - Verification that each new added source works, before committing
> them to sources.list.
The way you do this is an extremely bad scheme.. If a pre-existing entry
is down then all new entries you try to add will mysteriosly fail!
I also note that you are not using the apt-config mechanism to read file
and binary locations.
> To test it out, you need to put the 2 files I have attached to this
> bug report in /usr/lib/dpkg/methods/apt/ and make
> /usr/lib/dpkg/methods/apt/setup executable.
Your mime scheme didn't preserve filenames so I called one aptconf and the
other aptconf.templates and threw them in /tmp for testing.. It runs, but
I think it screwed up around 5 times just while I was futzing around, I
never did get it to load the mirror list [yes I changed the location in
the script] and it insisted in writing invalid urls!
Clearly there are few obvious bugs and that the script needs carefull
testing aside from my comments above about the core logics.
> archive (master:/debian2/web/webwml/english/mirror/Mirrors.masterlist).
> Place the file in /var/lib/dpkg/methods/apt/Mirrors.masterlist
I understand there are lots of minor consistency problems with this file
that nobody is working on fixing, not to mention the fact that nobody has
checked any of those mirrors for life. If an automated tool is going to
use this file it then that needs fixing.
Jason
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