[Pkg-clamav-devel] Bug#902290: Too abrupt removal of configuration option in stable update

[Hans van Kranenburg]

Hi Sebastian,

On 07/04/2018 10:21 PM, Sebastian Andrzej Siewior wrote:
> 
> On 2018-07-04 14:06:54 [+0200], To Hans van Kranenburg wrote:
>> On 2018-06-24 17:12:19 [+0200], Hans van Kranenburg wrote:
>>> My mailserver logs now contain 'ERROR: Parse error at line 74: Unknown
>>> option StatsHostID', and when that's removed, it reports the next option
>>> that is removed, 'StatsPEDisabled', and so on.
>> …
>>> Or, alternatively when throwing newer versions in stable, they have to
>>> be closely inspected to detect options that are removed and get patches
>>> like you did for #826406.
>>
>> I'm sorry. I've seen the removal of options and I didn't think about
>> this. If handle the config file with debconf then the option should
>> vanish automaticaly. However if you edit the file manually then user's
>> input is required and if nothing happens then clamav will abort.
>>
>> I intend to address this to for deb9 and document this behaviour so I
>> will remember it next time. I have to figure out who is in charge of
>> deb8 and I *think* it is LTS by now.

Thanks!

I'll be upgrading this part of my infra to Stretch RSN, and also will
have a look at the config we write with puppet now, to see if I can
throw out as much as possible. But still, I'd like unattended to also
keep taking care of clamav updates in the future yes.

> so I added a fix [0] to the Stretch branch for this. It would be nice if
> you could have a look on the Stretch package in case something else is
> missing :)

Looks good. It would of course be even better if upstream did something
like this, but I suspect there's a bit of a "you should always just run
latest" culture at clamav, also given the fact that you have to ship new
versions as security updates.

> With this change you should see something like
> | Jul 04 22:14:08 deb9amd64 clamd[8720]: WARNING: Ignoring deprecated option StatsTimeout at line 88
> | Jul 04 22:14:08 deb9amd64 clamd[8720]: WARNING: Ignoring deprecated option StatsPEDisabled at line 89
> 
> and move on.

\o/

> Now Jessie. It would be nice if the LTS team could pick it up. On the
> other hand the point-release exposed the problem and everyone had to
> deal with it…

-- 
Hans van Kranenburg