Bug796588#: adjtimex: Has init script in runlevel S but no matching service file

[Felipe Sateler]

On 14 December 2015 at 11:45, Roger Shimizu <rogershimizu at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 14, 2015 at 11:31 PM, Felipe Sateler <fsateler at debian.org> wrote:
>> On 14 December 2015 at 11:20, Roger Shimizu <rogershimizu at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Dear systemd maintainers,
>>>
>>> Thanks for helping for the adjtimex systemd service file last time.
>>> I write again because I find an issue related to the service file.
>>>
>>> When installing, adjtimex's postinst script will ask user whether to
>>> start the service by debconf, for the service file currently (enclosed
>>> here), it doesn't respect the debconf if user choose "No".
>>>
>>> I find a temporary solution to patch postinst to run "systemctl
>>> disable adjtimex.service" if user choose not to start the service when
>>> in "configure" mode.
>>> I call it "temporary" because it will miss some rare case such as:
>>> - installing adjtimex when in sysvinit and choose not to start the
>>> service, then installing systemd to replace sysvinit, it but this
>>> won't trigger adjtimex's postinst script to disable adjtimex's
>>> service.
>>
>> I don't follow. What exactly is the current behavior, and how does the
>> new systemd service file does not respect it? Please add more context.
>>
>> I'd even question the need to ask about enabling the service. If I
>> don't want the service, why did I install the package? Admins can
>> manually disable later if they don't want to run it.
>
> Adjtimex service is for setting up time ticks/frequency in kernel, but
> some user don't want to change ticks/frequency, but only want to print
> those kernel variables, maybe changed by NTP client.
> Please see bug #785208: https://bugs.debian.org/785208
>
> I think this requirement is rare, but reasonable.
> If reading debconf's result is wrong, I think another solution is to
> split adjtimex into adjtimex-base and adjtimex-service.
> But looks overhead because it's a tiny package already.

Another option is to simply not enable/start the service, and just
ship instructions on how to do that in README.Debian.

Running it on postinst looks weird to me. We normally do not run
possibly long processes synchronously on package installs.

-- 

Saludos,
Felipe Sateler