Debian kernel-package hooks transition

Posted by tadelste on Dec 27, 2005 12:11 AM EDT
Mailing list; By Manoj Srivastava
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Hi, In the recent 10.X series, kernel package has started producing image packages whose maintainer scripts use debconf for user interaction. Unfortunately, this meant that any hook scripts called in the maintainer scripts for the image package (update-grub comes to mind), if they wrote anything at all to the STDout, would cause debconf to throw hissy fits, since it was expecting commands on STDOUT, not random chatter from the hook scripts.





One solution was to call db_stop before calling the hook scripts, and redirecting stdout to stderr in hte invocation of the scripts. Unfortunately, this made any scripts that used debconf impossible.

So, either we ban scripts that are interactive, or scripts that scribble on stdout. Since the former makes some functionality impossible (some scripts can delicer added functionality and flexibility of they can interact with users), and the latter just needs a code change, I would prefer to ask packages that provide scripts to be used in kernel image postinst/postrm to use debconf for user interaction, and to send diagnostics to STDERR.

A big FAT warning shall be installed in NEWS.Debian for kernel-package. Since this change potentially shall make people who use Sid have kernel-images whose postinst fails (though the kernel image is fine, in most cases, and boots all right), I decided that using d-d-a was justified.

I would appreciate people fixing their postinst scrripts not to scribble to stdout.

manoj

Manoj Srivastava





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