[Openstack-devel] Bug#732547: Bug#732547: Does not preserve modifications to /etc/default/cinder-common

[Gaudenz Steinlin]

Hi Thomas

Thomas Goirand <zigo at debian.org> writes:

> On 12/18/2013 11:52 PM, Gaudenz Steinlin wrote:
>> Package: cinder-common
>> Version: 2013.2.1-1
>> Severity: serious
>> 
>> cinder-common fails to preserve modifications to the file
>> /etc/default/cinder-common. There seems to be some code in the config
>> script function manage_cinder_enable which tries to read the value 
>> from the file and set the debconf value accordingly, but this does not
>> work. The value of CINDER_ENABLE is always set back to what was stored
>> in debconf before.
>> 
>> If you have problems reproducing this I can help with more information.
>> But after looking at the config script for more than 1 hour I gave up. I
>> hope that those who have written this piece of code can better spot the
>> bugs. ;-) The bug should be easy to reproduce, just install
>> cinder-common and answer the debconf question cinder/start_services,
>> change the value in /etc/default/cinder-common and then reinstall to
>> package (to simulate an upgrade). The result is that the local
>> modification is not preserved.
>> 
>> Gaudenz
>
> Hi,
>
> This is some remaining from before I restarted working on the packaging
> of OpenStack, and a feature which I just didn't touch. Each time I see
> it, I think I should kill this functionality. Would you agree (and the
> rest of the packaging team) that it's useless, since Debian has all the
> needed tools to do that?
>
> If nobody complains about it, I'll kill this thing completely, and will
> do the same for Nova.

I'm not exactly sure what you are refering here with "this thing". If
you mean the part that you can enable service in /etc/default/* files,
then I completely agree. I just did not mention this because it's not
really part of the bug, but IMO this is a bad way to control if a
service is started or not, there are much better ways to not start a
service (ie runlevels) and at the same time keeping the possiblity of
starting it from the command line with the normal init script.

So I'm very much in favor of this. But this does only work around this
instance of the bug and not solve the deeper issue which is somewhere
inside the pile of shell code in openstack-pkg-tools. And AFAIK this is
code you wrote and not code that existed before you started working on
the openstack packages.

I think you should also fix this bug or it will probably reappear in
some form. The bug is somewhere hidden in the parsing of the
cinder-common default file. But I agree that this is then no longer a
serious bug and can be downgraded.

Gaudenz

-- 
Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter.
Try again. Fail again. Fail better.
~ Samuel Beckett ~