[pkg-firebird-general] Re: Being a beta tester for Firebird 2package on Debian

[Дамян Иванов]

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- -=| Valdir Marcos, 24.11.2006 18:32 |=-
>> Why separate users/groups for each version? What's wrong with single
>> user? All apache versions use the same user - www-data.
> 
> My experience: I installed both 1.5 and 2.0 manually on a client. I used
> them for a week, them uinstalled 1.5 (bu script) which "deleted" the
> user and group for both 1.5 and 2.0...
> If the user is the same for all versions, its even better, but we have
> to care of not deleting it when uninstalling and there is still another
> version remaining.

This is easy to solve. Firebird packages do not remove the user/group
upon removal. I see no gain in removing the user. Only problems... :)

>> Some binaries are in /usr/bin and I don't want to have
>> /usr/bin/gfix-1.5 and /usr/bin/gfix-2.0 - it's ugly and an overkill
>> having in mind that the typical installation will have only one
>> version installed.
> 
> I agree with about ugliness, but gfix and gbak are a little different in
> 1.5 and 2.0 as you can see in http://www.destructor.de/firebird/gfix.htm
> (Extended State Options in GFIX for Firebird 2.0).

Yes, but which one should respond to "gfix"? I am for avoiding
complications by allowing only one version to be installed at a time.

Hmm. Now I remember different approach that IIRC I've seen in postgresql
packages. It is like this.

Each version works independently. No binaries conflict. (We'll talk
about listening server later). firebird-1.5-utils installs
/usr/bin/gbak-1.5, /usr/bin/gfix-1.5 etc, firebird-2.0-utils installs
/usr/bin/gbak-2.0 etc.
Separate package, firebird-utils-common installs /usr/bin/gbak etc,
which is a wrapper that proceeds as follows.

Checks if there is /usr/bin/gbak-<version> and exec's it if found.
<version> is either determined from the environment (FIREBIRD_VERSION or
similar) or iterated from higher to lower versions until something is found.
If no "real" gbak is found, returns an error.

This will allow for simultaneous installation of -utils packages from
different versions with a way to force lower version default.

As for servers, they obviously install in different directories
(/usr/lib/firebird/<ver>), contain nothing in /usr/sbin and (this the
important point) come disabled by default.

(background)
This was recently brought up on debian-mentors mailing list. The
question was "why different FTP servers conflict with each other, and
different apache versions don't?" It makes perfect sense to be able to
install two or more ftp servers as long as they are not enabled
(listening on the default port) by default. Which server the admin will
enable is his/her choice and responsibility.

To bring this in our world, we may install many different firebird
server packages, as long as they install files in different places
(which is not hard to achieve) and ship with config files that don't
enable the listening daemon by default. Then the local admin may enable
the desierd server(s) on certain port(s).

There is one problem, however - the lock manager. It uses shared memory
segment with fixed name that can't be shared by different versions. Any
ideas how to work around this?

> I know that, and that's why I consider to have the deb file so
> important, because we could install a new version o FB by dpkg without
> have to wait until a package become "Debian stable". I do this all the
> time with tar.gz file...

What you need is called "backporting" and requires both packages to be
available at least in unstable...


	dam
- --
Damyan Ivanov                           Modular Software Systems
dam at modsoftsys.com
phone +359(2)928-2611, 929-3993              fax +359(2)920-0994
mobile +359(88)856-6067             dam at jabber.minus273.org/Gaim

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