[debhelper-devel] Bug#711755: don't attempt to reload apache2 if it wasn't running before we started the upgrade

[Niels Thykier]

Control: tags -1 moreinfo

On Sun, 13 Jul 2014 15:04:21 +0200 =?ISO-8859-15?Q?Arno_T=F6ll?=
<arno at debian.org> wrote:
> reassign 711755 debhelper
> affects 711755 src:apache2
> thanks
> 
> Hi,
> 
> On 09.06.2013 14:33, jidanni at jidanni.org wrote:
> > I'm telling you guys, not everybody runs apache2 24/7/365 days a year,
> > so please double check if it was running first (before the upgrade
> > started) before causing these error messages during upgrades!
> 
> technically, we do not but debhelper does.
> 
> We call dh_installinit as:
> 
> override_dh_installinit:
>         dh_installinit --restart-after-upgrade --error-handler=true --
> defaults 91 09
> 
> 
> [...]
> 
> I think, debhelper should check through invoke-rc.d status - when
> available - before (re-)starting a daemon unconditionally.
> 
> This is arguably a behavior which should be addressed on a higher level
> for all packages that handle init scripts through dh_installinit. If
> debhelper maintainers disagree, please assign back and we may workaround
> that particular behavior for our package only, even though that sounds
> wrong to me.
> 

Hi,

Thanks for the suggestion.

There is just one major caveat: The "status" command is "optional"[1].
If we were to implement this "status" check in debhelper, up to 300
packages would now fail to restart services on upgrades.

To be honest, I am not sure how to deal with this sanely in debhelper
without breaking packages.  At best, I could add a
"init-has-working-status" option to dh_installinit.

Thanks,
~Niels

[1]
https://lintian.debian.org/tags/init.d-script-does-not-implement-optional-option.html