Subject: Re: /usr/local (again)

From: [email-masked] (Bruce Perens)
Date: Tue, 3 Sep 96 22:20 PDT

From: Stuart Lamble <[email-masked]>
> Just a suggestion (and probably not a very good one): where a package needs
> to ask a question, perhaps it'd be appropriate to have a script
> postinst.questions (or some such) which can be run after all the other
> packages have been installed and configured?

Another possibility would be to have a script that runs immediately when
you select the package using "dselect", before the package is unpacked, and
squirrels away your input for later. Of course, we'd have to run it from
"dpkg" if "dselect" was not used.

Discussion, please?

	Thanks

	Bruce

---

From: Rob Browning <[email-masked]>
Date: 04 Sep 1996 00:43:02 -0500

> "dpkg" if "dselect" was not used.

Ok, you asked for it...

I'd suggest that often (esp. for site specific things) the best thing
would be for there to be an appropriate, documented configuration
file.  Something like /etc/what-to-do-with-local.

In more complex cases, I think we should have something like an
additional dpkg step, maybe call it "customize".  So there'd be three
installation actions for a package "unpack", "configure", and
"customize".  Normally, dselect and "dpkg --install" wouldn't run the
"customize" step for each package.  You'd have to do that manually.
But dpkg could know which customizations have and haven't been run,
just as it does for configures.

Good, bad?

(Sorry to propose more work for you, Ian.)
--
Rob

---

From: Lars Wirzenius <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 04 Sep 1996 12:48:57 +0300

> "dpkg" if "dselect" was not used.

I'd like some (easy) way of storing answers to questions. The
questions and answers could be shared between packages, when
suitable. One such question would be whether the local admin
wants to allow creation of the empty directories in /usr/local.

If we want to be ambitious, we'll create a fancy language for
defining the user interaction. Something similar to dialog, but
something that is not tied to text terminals, so that it can
later be extended to X as well. It's a big project, of course,
and not something that should be undertaken lightly.

Getting answers to these questions before unpacking anything
would probably be a good idea.

-- 
Please read <http://www.iki.fi/liw/mail-to-lasu.html> before mailing me.
Please don't Cc: me when replying to my message on a mailing list.

---

From: Buddha Buck <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 04 Sep 1996 08:16:56 -0400

> and not something that should be undertaken lightly.

I know that the Linux kernel has already solved that problem with their 
configuration setup programs -- they have three interfaces (text-based, 
curses based, and Tcl/Tk based) running off the same script, to 
generate the configuraton file.  It also allows you to edit the 
configuration using the same tools, by reading and parsing its own 
output.  It also allows the definition of arbitrary complex things and 
has the ability to handle interactions between items.

Could this be adapted for our needs?  It might not be perfect, but it 
-is- a start.  Some modifications I could see being necessary would be 
to create a way of handling separate config scripts for each package 
that need them, and a few other minor issues.

> would probably be a good idea.

This is useful for global options (what to do with /usr/local, for instance), but what about package-related options?

Or are we thinking of two separate (but related) problems?

-- 
     Buddha Buck                      [email-masked]
"Just as the strength of the Internet is chaos, so the strength of our
liberty depends upon the chaos and cacaphony of the unfettered speech
the First Amendment protects."  -- A.L.A. v. U.S. Dept. of Justice

---

From: Richard Kaszeta <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 4 Sep 1996 08:09:30 -0500

>wants to allow creation of the empty directories in /usr/local.

Also, if done in a careful manner, this 'answer' database could be
moved to another machine to help automate it's customization.

-- 
Richard W Kaszeta 			Graduate Student/Sysadmin
[email-masked]			University of MN, ME Dept
http://www.menet.umn.edu/~kaszeta

---

From: Dominik Kubla <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 04 Sep 1996 19:01:42 +0200

Hi folks, it's me again :)

> wants to allow creation of the empty directories in /usr/local.

That is the best idea so far.

> and not something that should be undertaken lightly.

Back when the perl/sh postinst script discussion started i tried to add a
TCL/TK interpreter to the dialog core to provide a common script language
coupled with fancy interfaces both for character and graphics based usage.

This could as well be the foundation for complete system administration
tool like SMIT or SAM - no not ADMINTOOL :) ...

But that is really a hard job: Getting the first code together and add some
simple dialog widgets was easy but then the problems started... Unfortunately
i ran out of free time to further pursue this project and killed it (literally,
no code left - that's the only way to stop me from wasting time with it)

Dominik

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