On 2023-05-15 23:14:30 -0500, David Wright wrote:
> On Mon 15 May 2023 at 16:38:29 (+0200), Vincent Lefevre wrote:
> > On 2023-05-15 08:36:41 -0500, David Wright wrote:
> > > On Mon 15 May 2023 at 12:51:55 (+0200), Vincent Lefevre wrote:
> > > > Under Debian/unstable, i.e. more much recent than stretch:
> > > >
> > > > zira:~> dpkg -s net-tools
> > > > Package: net-tools
> > > > Status: install ok installed
> > > > Priority: important
> > > > [...]
> > > >
> > > > This is still priority important!
> > >
> > > Not at all; AFAICT, the /internal/ Priority of the package has never
> > > changed.
> >
> > But this is what the user sees.
> >
> > > (Just guessing: if you installed it, you need it, and better
> > > hang on to it.)
> >
> > Wrong. It got installed automatically. I suppose that this is because
> > this was like that in the past, when I installed the machine in 2015,
> > thus before stretch was out.
>
> Of course, how stupid of me—I should have known that from your post
> about a system running sid (quoted above in its entirety).
Well, you should never try to guess, unless the guess is obvious.
BTW, I don't think that sid matters here; just the fact that the
machine was installed before stretch and that there is a current
dependency.
> > I suspect that it wasn't removed because
> > of the remaining "Recommends" from pbuilder:
> >
> > zira:~> aptitude why net-tools
> > i pbuilder Recommends net-tools | iproute2
> >
> > Note: iproute2 is installed too, but net-tools gets the preference.
> > This "Recommends" is rather strange if iproute2 is supposed to be
> > better!
>
> That's a very odd recommendation: it's difficult to envisage someone
> building packages on a system that doesn't have all the packages with
> Priority important already installed.
I suppose that this may be useful in case the priority is lowered
in the future.
> And I haven't seen where any ranking should be understood from
> the ordering of Recommends alternatives.
>
> And AIUI aptitude why picks an arbitrary choice from equally
> strong dependencies (sensu lato). There may be others present.
I don't know whether this lists all the dependencies (but the
man page uses the plural):
zira:~> deborphan net-tools
net-tools
pbuilder
And this one should give all of them:
zira:~> apt list '?any-version(?installed?depends(?exact-name(net-tools)))'
Listing... Done
zira:~> apt list '?any-version(?installed?recommends(?exact-name(net-tools)))'
Listing... Done
pbuilder/stable,testing,unstable,now 0.231 all [installed]
> You say your system is pre-stretch, ie jessie.
Indeed, it was installed from
http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/8.1.0/amd64/jigdo-dvd/debian-8.1.0-amd64-DVD-1.jigdo
with just "SSH server" and "standard system utilities" in the
installer choices. I upgraded to sid shortly after.
> That means that you will have had both iproute2 and net-tools
> installed, as in jessie they are both ranked important.
Yes, both were installed at install time.
> As far as net-tools's survival is concerned, that's up to you.
> Debian gives you some tools to help remove cruft, but aggressive
> removal from systems could lead to scripts breaking and so on,
> particularly where there are Recommends in play.
I used some net-tools utilities, mainly ifconfig, in the past (on
older machines), but I no longer have any script that depends on
them, and I don't think that this is an issue for pbuilder as the
other ORed recommends will be satisfied.
However, a comment in /etc/postfix/main.cf.proto still mentions
"ifconfig" only (it appears that the corresponding sentence in
the postconf(5) man page was updated, but not this file):
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1036161
--
Vincent Lefèvre <vinc...@vinc17.net> - Web: <https://www.vinc17.net/>
100% accessible validated (X)HTML - Blog: <https://www.vinc17.net/blog/>
Work: CR INRIA - computer arithmetic / AriC project (LIP, ENS-Lyon)
