[Pkg-rrfw-general] Re: Unofficial Debian packages for RRFW 0.1.7 available

[Marc Haber]

On Sun, Aug 15, 2004 at 01:12:35PM -0400, Jurij Smakov wrote:
> On Sun, 15 Aug 2004, Marc Haber wrote:
> > [Did you e-mail off-list deliberately? I think this discussion needs
> > to be on-list]
> 
> No, I've just forgot to CC:, including it now.

It would probably be a good idea to bounce your last message to the
list as well, I will then do so with mine just to have a complete
archive.

> > I have never seen a package done by somebody new to Debian and so
> > cleanly done. Congratulations. Where did you learn so much about
> > Debian so fast?
> 
> Well, I have only started doing packaging a couple of months ago, but I've
> been lurking on mailing lists and IRC for well over a year now, so I would
> not say it was fast learning.

Where can I catch you on IRC?

> > A few more things:
> >
> > -common needs to depend on netbase, since rrfw_devdiscover fails
> > without /etc/services.
> 
> I'll fix that. By the way, I am curious how you've discovered that, since
> the ordinary chroot produced by debootstrap has netbase installed. Do you
> have a specially crafted chroot with only Essential installed?

I have my own chroot helper environment, which I plan to publish RSN
on http://wiki.debian.net/index.cgi?ZugSchlus. It only contains the
bare minimum of packages I usually need, but it surely has more than
plain essential. For sid and sarge, it is possible to have netbase
removed, and those /etc/services missing errors are a common mistake.

> > rrfw_devdiscover writes routers.xml to /usr/share while the file
> > should go to /etc. First, the local admin might want to change that
> > file, second, /usr should probably only have files from the
> > distribution, and third, /usr might be mounted r/o. Maybe the entire
> > xmlconfig directory should be symlinked to /etc. But actually, I think
> > that all files put to /usr/share/rrfw should better be in /etc.
> 
> I have spent quite some time thinking about what's the best way to do
> that. I didn't want to place the entire /usr/share/rrfw stuff into
> /etc/rrfw because most of these files are not intended to be modified
> by the user. Currently only the modifiable files are placed into /etc/rrfw
> (such as *-siteconfig.pl) and the symbolic links are created in
> /usr/share/rrfw so that RRFW can find them. Since it expects all the files
> to be in the same directory, the only place where the user-created tree
> definitions can go is /usr/share/rrfw/xmlconfig. The ideal solution would
> be if RRFW would look for the configuration files in two different
> locations, so we can cleanly separate the read-only and modifiable
> configuration files (by placing the former in /usr/share/rrfw and the
> latter in /etc/rrfw). But if you think that placing it in /etc is ok, I
> could change it pretty easily.

I think it is less painful to have files that are not intended to be
changed in /etc. All these files have "DO NOT CHANGE" rather
prominently, and in /etc local changes get caught by dpkg-conffile
handling pretty fast.

Btw:
[4/504]mh@vash:~$ sudo grep -ilr 'do not edit' /etc/ 2>/dev/null | wc -l
33
[5/505]mh@vash:~$

Did you consider having /etc/rrfw/rrfw-config.pl
symlinked to /usr/share/rrfw/rrfw-config?

But of course we should pester Stanislav into introducing two
directories to be read from which really is the best idea.

> > If the daemon stop process might take more than the ten seconds it
> > takes on my test box (configured for a single host being queries), you
> > might want to steal some "progress showing" code either from squid,
> > zebra, or quagga's init script just to show the user that there is
> > still something happening.
> 
> Yes, that's a good idea, however I am not sure if any progress indication
> is policy-compliant. After all, section 9.4 of the policy describes how
> the messages from the init.d scripts should look like in quite detail.

Yes, but we deviate from that all the time. Init script output is
still a mess in Debian :-(

> Also, the long shutdown times are documented/explained in README.Debian
> (question 6) and, as explained there, are user-configurable through the
> variables in /etc/default/rrfw-common.

I have seen that

> > The account name rrfw might be bad since there is potential for
> > conflict. I'd prefer having something like Debian-rrfw, but be sure to
> > read up on the flamewars about that topic before you change anything.
> 
> Yes, I have read the exim story :-) and don't quite understand why people
> make such a fuss out of it. The only thing which I would change is using
> all lowercase and keeping it at or under 8 symbols, so that there is less
> chance to break stuff. How does rrfw-adm sound?

Doesn't sound quite right since this is not the account of the rrfw
_admin_. Additionally, I consider it a bad idea to introduce one more
naming scheme for package account names. Damn, we really need a policy
on that.

> Thanks for all your comments,

You're welcome. Thanks for your work invested into a great package.

Greetings
Marc

-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Marc Haber         | "I don't trust Computers. They | Mailadresse im Header
Karlsruhe, Germany |  lose things."    Winona Ryder | Fon: *49 721 966 32 15
Nordisch by Nature |  How to make an American Quilt | Fax: *49 721 966 31 29