Bug#365613: [pkg-wpa-devel] Bug#365613: wpasupplicant: Upgrading remote system makes it unmaintainable after reboot

[Reinhard Tartler]

severity 365613 wishlist
retitle 365613 Please retain the system service wpasupplicant
tags 365613 wontfix
merge 365613 360387
stop it right now and finally, felix!

Severity wishlist, this does not break your whole system, but your
network connection. So I'm merging this with 360387, which is the same
issue.

On Mon, May 01, 2006 at 03:27:47PM +0200, Felix Homann wrote:
> I tried upgrading wpasupplicant from 0.4.7-4 to 0.4.8-4 on a remote system 
> that is connected to the network via a WPA connection using wpa_supplicant. 
> The system is a "server only" system: It does not have a video card or 
> keyboard but is maintained  via SSH.

This is a quite extreme and constructed example. You did know in advance
that this would break, as would have anyone who uses apt-listchanges,
since this is written in Debian.NEWS.

> After upgrading everything seemed to work as usual until reboot. After reboot 
> the system could not connect to the network anymore and was therefore 
> unmaintainable.
> 
> Reason: /etc/wpa_suplicant.conf was renamed without warning.
> 
> Solution: Don't rename /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf on upgrade.

And you exactly know why this isn't feasible. You still need some kind
of system service, since this is what you rely on. This system service
has been dropped as discussed on http://wiki.debian.org/WPA. If you want
to help to write a clean upgrade path, feel free to submit patches, but
please finally stop filing more duplicates on issues we are already
aware of. 

For other readers: I proposed to establish another package which
provides the system service 'wpasupplicant' just like the version in
sarge, which Felix found 'inferior' as well. We are still investigating
the issue and options, how to make upgrades from sarge more smoothly.

Gruesse,
	Reinhard