The debian-private mailing list leak, part 1. Volunteers have complained about Blackmail. Lynchings. Character assassination. Defamation. Cyberbullying. Volunteers who gave many years of their lives are picked out at random for cruel social experiments. The former DPL's girlfriend Molly de Blanc is given volunteers to experiment on for her crazy talks. These volunteers never consented to be used like lab rats. We don't either. debian-private can no longer be a safe space for the cabal. Let these monsters have nowhere to hide. Volunteers are not disposable. We stand with the victims.

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: Rethinking UPMs package format



On 16 Jan 1997, Rob Browning wrote:

osiris >Christoph Lameter <clameter@waterf.org> writes:
osiris >
osiris >> - Make packages immediately run the postinst after unpacking
osiris >
osiris >I'm not sure, but couldn't this cause problems?  Say you have package
osiris >B that depends on package A, and you say
osiris >
osiris >  dpkg --install A.deb B.deb
osiris >
osiris >As I understand the situation now this means that A and B will both be
osiris >unpacked and then both will be configured.  This means that B can have
osiris >stuff in it's postinst that depends on A to work.  Your proposed
osiris >change would not allow this.  I'm not sure it would affect existing
osiris >packages, but I thought I should mention it.

This would cause problems without automatic retrieval. But with my
proposed change the following will happen:

1. Attempt to install A

2. There is a missing dependency so package B is installed

3. Package A is installed.

4. Mentioned package B on the commandline is skipped since already
installed.

osiris >Also, if the original point of this was to make sure that services
osiris >(like net services) are not down for too long, then why not just
osiris >install the net package in question (or any package where this is an
osiris >issue) separately?

That is just what the changes do. They work like doing a dpkg -i for each
package individually.

osiris >Also, I'd say that for any system where downtime is critical, you just
osiris >need to have a scheduled period, like midnight, or Saturday mornings,
osiris >where it is known policy that system services may be down for
osiris >maintenance.  I not sure this is really an issue for dpkg to solve.

That is not the only problem. Unconfiguring a package and then letting
other packages depending on it think that all is fine and they just
continue working is an illusion. The time any package is not configured
must be minimized for system stability not only to avoid downtime.

--- +++ --- +++ --- +++ --- +++ --- +++ --- +++ --- +++ ---
Please always CC me when replying to posts on mailing lists.



--
Please respect the confidentiality of material on the debian-private list.
TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word "unsubscribe" to
debian-private-REQUEST@lists.debian.org . Trouble? e-mail to Bruce@Pixar.com