Bug#478904: cron script for apt needs improvement

[Osamu Aoki <osamu@debian.org>]

Hi,

Otavio and Mike,

(Mike being unattended-upgrades packager who may be most affected by my
change oif I haad made wrong move, I want his opinion and review.)

  [ Osamu Aoki ]
  * Updated cron script to support backups by hardlinks and
    verbose levels.  All features turned off by default.
  * Added more error handlings.  Closes: #438803, #462734, #454989,
  * Refactored condition structure to make download and upgrade performed
    if only previous steps succeeded. Closes: #341970
  * Documented all cron script related configuration items in
    configure-index.

Please note I did not add  unattended-upgrades specific ones into
configure-index.  Mike, you should do it to prevent nme space collision.

I am not using Ubunts and many of recent these feature seems to be lead
by Ubunts stable support.  I do not want to create problem for them.

On Sat, May 03, 2008 at 02:50:06PM -0300, Otavio Salvador wrote:
> Osamu Aoki <osamu@debian.org> writes:
> > On Fri, May 02, 2008 at 12:20:12PM -0300, Otavio Salvador wrote:
> >> Osamu Aoki <osamu@debian.org> writes:
> >> I do like your proposal and would like to know if you'd like to start
> >> a bzr branch to work on that and then we can upload it to experimental
> >> until Lenny is released.
> > Thanks.   I will try.  Any site should I look besides archive site.
> You could take a look at the alioth and you'd be able to host it there
> i guess.

I am doing it but its progress is too slow.  I hope to see it finished by
tommorow morning :-)  (Now: Mon May  5 01:03:23 JST 2008)

$ bzr push --create-prefix sftp://osamu@bzr.debian.org/~/public_html/apt

> We'd need to support backward compatibility but it doesn't need to be
> done quietly. We might output a warning to let user to know that he
> needs to change his/her configuration for the new variables and at
> Lenny+2 we can drop it.

Anyway, these were undocumented feature in terms of normal document.

Since I added onfigure-index this time, it is minimally documented and
tose old syntax are marked deprecated.  So dropping them infuture is
doable.

Since I made few extra verbosity control, I might have introduced bugs.
Quick look at shell -x result seems OK.

I will see how my system behaves next few days.

Osamu

FYI: I added -d for unttended-upgrades for Verbose>=3 by guessing from
source Perl code.

PS: I used seq command to make backup levels as variable.  Its code is
not so clear but running script under exported VERBOSE=5 (or from
/etc/apt/apt.conf.d/*) should give you better idea.  seq is core utils
so I think it is safe to use.  (Should I check /usr/ is mouted?)