Bug#380233: [pkg-ntp-maintainers] Bug#380233: package transition leaves a mess of old ntp-server and ntp-simple stuff, including dangerous purge possibilities

[Max Bowsher]

Peter Eisentraut wrote:
> Max Bowsher wrote:
>> Upgrading to the 4.2.2 ntp packages, which merge the ntp-server and
>> ntp-simple packages into the ntp package leaves the old packages in
>> the 'config-files' state.  In particular, this leaves active cron
>> scripts under the name 'ntp-server', which are then duplicated by the
>> new 'ntp' scripts. This may lead to weird unintentional behaviours as
>> various lag rotation jobs are run twice, once by the old, once by the
>> new scripts.
> 
> My thought on the cron jobs is that we're going to remove them in the 
> new package, because logging goes to syslog by default, and there 
> doesn't seem to be a good reason not to use that anyway, plus we have 
> requests to use logrotate, which would be a better alternative if we 
> needed it, which we don't.

OK... meanwhile, having the logs rotated twice as fast is inelegant but
not too serious.

> The init script might be a bit of an issue because you might have two 
> init scripts trying to start the same program, but there are interlocks 
> that should prevent that.

The post-upgrade state is exactly that - two init scripts for the same
program, both active. Even if there are interlocks, it is still messy.

>> Additionally, if an incautious sysadmin was to purge the old
>> packages, then the old ntp-simple postinst script will cause serious
>> damage to the existing ntp installation, in particular, deleting the
>> 'ntp' user, as well as deleting the /var/lib/ntp/ and
>> /var/log/ntpstats/ directories.
> 
> My answer to that is that you shouldn't randomly purge packages at 
> random times.

What then, _is_ the proper way to purge packages? I haven't found any
way to preview the results of a purge without peeking inside
/var/lib/dpkg/info/ .

> We could, however, try to document a sequence of steps 
> to clean up your system after an upgrade.  Basically, if you restart 
> ntp after you purge ntp-server, you should be fine.
> 
> The ntp-simple and ntp-refclock packages can be safely removed at any 
> time I believe.

No, not at all. As I said, the ntp-simple postinst deletes the 'ntp'
user account during purge, which the new ntp packages still use.

Max.

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