This one time, at band camp, Jonas Smedegaard said: > On Mon, 24 Apr 2006 11:16:03 +0100 Stephen Gran wrote: > > This one time, at band camp, Jonas Smedegaard said: > > > If that's not the case, I apologize. > > No need for that - I wasn't offended :-)
Glad to hear it. > > It's fairly clearly kernel-package. kernel-package ships a sample > > config file, a man page, and is also responsible for the postinst > > hooks in the kernel images that mess with kernel-img.conf. > > Right - a manpage can be interpreted as evidence of claiming > ownership: No other package can provide same manpage without conflict. [...] > ...IMHO, that is. Please let me know if you find my arguments bogus > :-) Fair enough. > > Right now, the kernel images just open it and write to it if it's > > not there. Since their postinst scripts come from kernel-package > > itself, I am not sure if that's a policy violation or not. But it > > certainly is for other packages that don't use kernel-package > > generated maintainer scripts. > > As clarified above, I do believe so. That may be. So far, we have been pretty lenient WRT kernel images (and kernel-package) and policy. I am a little leery of opening an RC bug on them right now, as I think vorlon might beat me with a heavy stick for making his life harder than it already is :) I do think it's something worth discussing within the kernel team, however, and you seem better placed than I am to start that discussion. I am happy to help with code, but I don't know the guts of kernel package all that well, so it may take longer than is worth it for me to come up to speed with all the hooks and options that a helper script would need to know about. > > That means on my system at least, sysvinit owns the file > > /etc/inittab. > > Well, we obviously agrees that sysvinit installs the file if not there > already (that's what I wrote too). So does lessdisks-terminal :-) > > If "Installing a configuration file" means owning that file, then (as > I wrote) it seems to me that sysvinit has other policy violations with > its treatment of the configuration file. > > But I agree that we are getting astray here :-) Yes, I think we are as well. There are plenty of buggy packages in Debian, my own being no exception, in all likelihood. But let's take them on one bug report at a time :) > > This is exactly like /etc/inetd.conf - no package 'owns' it in the > > dpkg -S sense, but it clearly is owned by whichever of the inetd > > implementations that you have installed, and there is a helper > > script to update it. > > Ah, so it's a shared configuration file, and there already is a > defined method of interaction. I didn't know that. Ah, OK - this is exactly what I was trying to get at. Maybe I should have been more clear up front. Sorry about that. > Which is the correct script to update inittab? And where can I read > more about it? As far as I know, again, there is none. I think this is such a rare need that no one has bothered to write one. > > > I don't mean to say that there's no bug, but that I believe the > > > bug is a different one: Noone claims ownership of those > > > configuration files, so it is uncertain what package to either bug > > > about an interface or to conflict against. If you agree with my > > > viewpoint, we should probably rename this bugreport and clone it > > > to other packages involved. > > > > I disagree. I think it is pretty straightforward which packages own > > the files in question. I am in favor of filing bugs on > > kernel-package and/or sysvinit for helper scripts to update their > > config files, though. > > Whatever the bug, it does not escape lessdisks, and it does relate to > those other packages. And this discussion has helped me (if noone > else) understand it better. > > Would you care to file those bugreports? I'd be happy to help resolve > the issues, so please cc me if/when doing so, but am a slow writer, so > would appreciate commenting rather than initiating. As I said, probably talking about the issue (for kernel-package, at least) before bug filing is going to be most helpful. I don't want to get to the point of filing a bunch of bugs that don't have a clear goal behind them, and since I don't really know the guts of kernel-package that well, that is roughly what I'd end up doing. I think having a chat with manoj about what parts of the config file should be exported and writable by a helper script is a good first step, then from that, the design of a helper script should come pretty quickly. For sysvinit, I have no idea. If there are other init implementations (at the moment I only see minit as an alternative, but ISTR a runit or something package at some point as well) then it will need to be worked on in coordination with all of them, so there is a generic interface to a file that may have different formats. But in general, the fast resolution for your package is to just stop writing to these config files, and put a note in README.Debian that says roughly, "add these two lines to this file, and this line to that file". That would close this bug while the longer term correct solution is being worked on. Just my thoughts for now. Take care, -- ----------------------------------------------------------------- | ,''`. Stephen Gran | | : :' : [EMAIL PROTECTED] | | `. `' Debian user, admin, and developer | | `- http://www.debian.org | -----------------------------------------------------------------
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