Bug#251949: "trivial" change to config files

[Marc Haber]

On Fri, Feb 04, 2005 at 03:52:53AM -0500, Andrew Archibald wrote:
> Marc Haber wrote:
> >On Fri, Feb 04, 2005 at 02:41:11AM -0500, Andrew Archibald wrote:
> >
> >It is always a good idea to get some acquaintance with the software
> >you're using.
> 
> Hmm, there's something to be said for software that Just Works, as much 
> as possible.

Making an MTA completely configurable via Debconf is not possible, IMO.

> >The port number needs to be in the smtp transport which is actually
> >used for message delivery, and that transport is surprisingly named
> >remote_smtp_smarthost if you're using a smarthost setup.
> 
> So, after some reading, I now have some idea what transports, routers, 
> and so forth are.  But really, I'd have been happier just punching in a 
> port number.

And other people would have been happier just pushing a button for
their local UUCP setup to work. Other people would have been happier
to get Mailing List support for (mailman, majordomo, sympa, petidomo,
all different) via Debconf.

> I also spent a certain amount of time editing the wrong config files, 
> since it wasn't clear that all the configuration was present in two 
> places, only one of which had any effect (this was not helped by the 
> program update-exim4.conf, which I assumed to be constructing exom4.conf 
> from fragments.

update-exim4.conf does construct exim4.conf from fragments if the user
has chosen that option.

> >Debian takes great care in not clobbering local conffile changes on
> >package upgrades. So there is no reason to be afraid of that.
> 
> Except when you change something that's not supposed to be a conffile, 
> like the file generated (perhaps only in old setups) from all the 
> modutils fragments.

Everthing in /etc not being a conffile is a bug. Actually, current
package building tools make every file installed to /etc a conffile
automatically. Which is, btw, the reason why exim4 reads its actual
configuration from /var/lib/exim4.

> Edit that, andit vanishes next time a module is 
> upgraded.

That should not happen. If it happens, it is a release critical bug.

> No, I can see that.  But the people who use debconf have no idea what 
> the usual way for exim is.

So they shouldn't run a mail system. The exim packages go quite a way
to support the mainstream, which is hard enough by itself.

> They may well have used ssh, though, or a 
> web browser.  If it's too confusing, a separate box at the "control 
> freak" priority would work; at the least some instructions in 
> /usr/share/doc/exim4-config would be nice.

I do not understand what you mean.

> Anyway, the package is not actually broken, and most users will not have 
> to suffer this. But it would be nice if those who do had an easier time 
> of it.

They have quite an easy time.

If you're not happy with the way the exim4 packages are maintained,
please call the tech ctte to overrule the maintainer's decisions.
otoh, the package might find itself orphaned after a tech ctte decision.

Another possibility would be forking exim4-config, making your own
effort to make the Debconf user interface more friendly. The
infrastructure for doing so is already in place.

Greetings
Marc

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