[Pkg-sysvinit-devel] Bug#431224: Bug#431224: deinstallation does not work either with + or * in package name

[Henrique de Moraes Holschuh]

On Sat, 15 Dec 2007, Petter Reinholdtsen wrote:
> The patch seem sane enough, but one thing make we wonder.  Are init.d
> scripts supposed to have names with + or * in them?  Especially the *
> might confuse other parts of the boot system (for example
> /etc/init.d/rc), and I am thus unsure if this is something we should
> fix there, or if the fix should be done in the packages with the
> problematic init.d scripts.

We should actually fix everything to not bother with + or *, or any other
shell metacharacter.  It won't be easy, though.

That said, using "*" in a initscript name (or package name, for that matter)
is foolhardy.  It is the same as asking "hit me with a huge spiked war
hammer, if you dare!" to a sadistic serial killer who hates your guts and
just got said weapon as a gift and wants to try it out.

But we still have to properly handle (i.e. don't spin around and blow up)
files with weird crap in their file names inside the init.d directory.

> This make me believe that it would be correct to accept + in init.d
> file names, but not *.

Exactly.  Banging out with an error in update-rc.d if anything tries that is
the right thing to do.

-- 
  "One disk to rule them all, One disk to find them. One disk to bring
  them all and in the darkness grind them. In the Land of Redmond
  where the shadows lie." -- The Silicon Valley Tarot
  Henrique Holschuh