[pkg-bacula-devel] Bug#1109499: bacula-director-sqlite3: fails to dist-upgrade from bookworm to trixie

[Adrian Bunk]

On Wed, Jul 30, 2025 at 09:41:59AM +0200, Carsten Leonhardt wrote:
> Hi Adrian,

Hi Carsten,

> Adrian Bunk <bunk at debian.org> writes:
> 
> > On Mon, Jul 28, 2025 at 12:12:55PM +0200, Carsten Leonhardt wrote:
>...
> > Is it true that they would "only notice hours (or days) later"?
> 
> Yes, if the database they have is big enough. See
> https://alioth-lists.debian.net/pipermail/pkg-bacula-devel/2024-February/003373.html
> 
> > The expected error handling would be:
> > 1. bacula-director-$db.postint fails, aborting the upgrade with a clear
> >    error message for the administrator
> > 2. administrator creates required space
> > 3. attempting again to upgrade the package is successful and results in
> >    a correctly upgraded database
> >
> > What actually matters is that this error handling works,
> > since some users will always hit this problem no matter
> > how often and how annoyingly you informed them.
> 
> Don't forget that dbconfig will already have altered the database. Just
> adding space and running the upgrade again will fail.

you are saying that when an upgrade that might take over 1 day is 
interrupted, it cannot automatically resume or restart.

This is a problem that should ideally be fixed.

>...
> > Regarding bacula-common.preinst, it is much better for our users to read 
> > the release notes once instead of having to deal with release notes in 
> > the form of dozens of debconf questions on every single machine being 
> > upgraded.
> >
> > debconf is for configuring packages, not for forcing information on users.
> >
> > It seems something has already been added to the release notes:
> > https://www.debian.org/releases/trixie/release-notes/issues.html#bacula-director-database-schema-update-needs-large-amounts-of-disk-space-and-time
> >
> > Release notes and NEWS.Debian are for informing users, you already have 
> > both of these now.
> 
> We ask for confirmation that the upgrade is possible, I think that's not
> "forcing information on users".

Do you really want to receive the Release Notes in the form of
100 debconf questions you have to manually acknowledge on every
machine you upgrade?

Users will just be annoyed and click through it without reading,
as is already common on the web.

The user is supposed to read the Release Notes before upgrading,
if the user chooses not to read them that's not our problem.

> Regards
> 
> Carsten

cu
Adrian