Bug#474311: /usr/sbin/saslauthd: Prevents system from booting whilst in Debug

[Fabian Fagerholm]

severity 474311 minor
done

Hello Ronald,

Thank you for your bug report.

On Fri, 2008-04-04 at 22:58 +0100, Ronald MacDonald wrote:
> Including the options -Vd (verbose debug) in /etc/default/saslauthd
> causes system to hang whilst rebooting.
> 
> This is of particular concern when server is in a remote location, and
> cannot be fixed remotely.

The -d option is strictly for debugging. It causes saslauthd not to
detach from its tty -- in other words, saslauthd ceases to function as a
background daemon process and becomes a foreground process. This is by
design, and I don't think we can even hope to predict all the ways users
could break their systems with this behaviour.

We could put a warning in the shipped /etc/default/saslauthd against
using the -d option and instead suggesting that users run saslauthd by
hand if they want to debug. Ronald, do you think this would be enough to
prevent the mishap you experienced?

Thanks,
-- 
Fabian Fagerholm <fabbe at paniq.net>
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