[debian-mysql] Bug#797210: mariadb-10.0: mariadb-server does not ship a debconf set for creating a adminitrative user (like mysql-server do)

[Carsten Schoenert]

Hello Otto,

shame on me, I marked this email to answer but didn't have done this
yet.

On Sat, Jan 02, 2016 at 12:07:15AM +0200, Otto Kekäläinen wrote:
> I have updated the README, see
> https://github.com/ottok/mariadb-10.0/commit/817a2fbe6bdeb76f7f076f745574ae3a865f35f4

Guido Guenther pointed me also to the available unix socket on the local
machine, that's much better than a SQL root user with a password people
mostly forget. So yes, this README is better now.

> Unfortunately I don't understand dbconfig-common enough to know what I
> should do to accomodate the automation.

Well, a possible solution can be to create a dbconfig-common dialogue
that's asking the user if he wants to set up a root user. And a short
explanation in this dialogue where such a setup is appropriate and then
it's not.

> Where does it fall short now?  On new installs you can just run as
> root mysqld and execute whatever you want, it is very simple.

Ack

> I skimmed through
> https://people.debian.org/~seanius/policy/dbconfig-common.html/ but
> didn't really get the hang of it. The docs are written for "consumers"
> and not "providers" like the mariadb-10.0 package maintainers would
> need to read about.

I don't get this point, what do you mean between consumer and provider?
As a package maintainer you need to ensure thet the user who is installing
your package is guided through the installation so the package is
completely configured and running after the installation.

For mariadb-server this means the user should be noticed about the
"normal" unix socket authentication mechanism and the alternative
classical user/password possibility.
This must can be done via dbconfig-common but should be available in the
documentation so a user like me (I'm not very experienced in setting up
databases) will now what to do.

> Feel free to send in pull requests / git merge requests if you have
> ideas for improvement. I promise to review them quickly.

I'm corrently a little bit short on time so I can't provide more usefull
pieces.
Once the zarafa [1] package is gone into experiemental we will get more
experience on setting up automatically the needed database and I can
provide some suggestions. This workes already but the database may be
running on another host for example.

For now feel free to close this report as you expanded the README about
this topic.

[1] https://ftp-master.debian.org/new/zarafa_7.2.1~RC51272+dfsg1-1.html

Regards
Carsten