[Pkg-kbd-devel] Bug#796583: Bug#796583: How are people supposed to deal with the missing setterm calls?

[Andreas Henriksson]

Hello Marga Manterola.

On Tue, Apr 19, 2016 at 02:37:23PM +0000, Marga Manterola wrote:
> The NEWS.Debian file says that users should move to console-setup instead
> of kbd, which would be fine if console-setup provided the same
> functionality.  For certain things, it doesn't. Look at this snippet from
> the old init script:
> 
>     # screensaver stuff
>     setterm_args=""
>     if [ "$BLANK_TIME" ]; then
>         setterm_args="$setterm_args -blank $BLANK_TIME"
>     fi
>     if [ "$BLANK_DPMS" ]; then
>         setterm_args="$setterm_args -powersave $BLANK_DPMS"
>     fi
>     if [ "$POWERDOWN_TIME" ]; then
>         setterm_args="$setterm_args -powerdown $POWERDOWN_TIME"
>     fi
>     if [ "$setterm_args" ]; then
>         setterm $setterm_args
>     fi
> 
> As far as I can see, there's nothing in console-setup that provides this
> functionality.  At all.

ACK.

> 
> Is each and every user of kbd expected to now write their own init script
> that calls setterm with the right arguments?

If running setterm is important to you, yes then you could write your
own init script (or other mechanism) to do that.

> 
> Why was this dropped without providing an alternative?

Primarily because very few users are expected to ever care about that
specific part of the init script and obviously noone stepped up to carry
the maintenance burden of keeping it around.
Also this Debian-specific snippet breaks distro-agnostic and more
efficient ways of handling this IIRC. e.g. passing kernel commandline
options. (Maybe that was some other bit of this init scripts though.
My memory is vague since you're joining the party quite late on this
discussion.)
Please also note that Ubuntu was disabling this part for a long time
since they considered it harmful. Please give us the benefit of the
doubt when you jump to the conclution that this was done without careful
consideration.

Why should kbd package ship an init script for a utility that's not part
of kbd in the first place? 
Why should we have duplicate configurations for the same settings?
Why should the burden of carrying this exotic feature be put on the
scarse maintenance resources rather than on the few potential users?
Why should I be required to provide support for people who doesn't
want to do their own research and thinks the bug tracking system
is a support forum?

All above rethorical questions ofcourse... please feel free to not
answer them.

Please feel free to close and archive this bug report again.

Regards,
Andreas Henriksson