Source: dpkg Severity: wishlist Tags: d-i Justification: wishlist X-Debbugs-Cc: j24...@gmail.com
Dear Maintainer, Please provide a new option in dpkg 1.21.x that allows disabling all sync / fsync calls similar to how currently done by libeatmydata. There are more and more use cases that benefit from a faster dpkg but don't need any protection against sudden shutdowns or terminations of dpkg, some examples include the debian installer, building containers, temporary chroots (sbuild), temporary VMs. Currently eatmydata can be used to achive this and it has the benefit of also disabling all sync / fsync calls in maintainer scripts, triggers, ... But eatmydata uses LD_PRELOAD, which in my opinion is a hack and won't work on some hardened systems, it also adds a lot of complexity and extra steps in many different places. A new option --force-dangerous-io would allow tools to easily capture most of the performance benefits where appropiate. Of course add some big and scary warnings in the manual about how this should never be used on a system you care about. (Also discussed with guillem on irc #debian-dpkg oftc 2021-03-25)
