[Pkg-sysvinit-devel] Bug#619785: Please move logsave to sysvinit-utils

[Andreas Henriksson]

Hello Carsten Hey,

On Sun, Mar 27, 2011 at 01:19:26AM +0100, Carsten Hey wrote:
> Package: sysvinit-utils
> Severity: wishlist
> 
> 
> * Ted Ts'o [2011-03-26 19:07 -0400]:
[...]
> > Another binary which is used by other packages includes the logsave
> > utility, which is also in e2fsprogs, and which is used by
> > /etc/init.d/checkfs.sh and /etc/init.d/checkroot.sh in the initscripts
> > package.
> 
> Debian supports (or rather will probably support) three init systems:
> 
>  * systemd does not use logsave to save the fsck log if /var/log is not
>    mounted yet, but instead "just pipes the stdout of fsck to syslog
>    which ends up in dmesg if syslog is not yet running" (thanks to
>    whoever explained this in #systemd).
> 
>  * sysvinit and upstart depend on the package initscripts, which depends
>    on sysvinit-utils.
> 
> 
> logsave does not use any libraries except libc.  Provided that Ted Ts'o
> agrees, please consider moving logsave to sysvinit-utils.

>From my investigations I can see that logsave command seems to only
be used in 'initramfs-tools' and 'sysvinit' (initscripts).

If e2fsprogs becomes non-essential as discussed in #474540 these
two users could simply add a dependency on e2fsprogs. I don't see
the point in moving the utility over to sysvinit-utils, specially
since that package is also under discussion to be made non-essential
(see #851747).

Another way to view it is to investigate if these two couldn't just
stop using logsave. The code in initramfs-tools and sysvinit is
basically identical. For initramfs-tools the fsck log is saved in
/run which should already be mounted at the time of running fsck,
so I guess it could simply be replaced with appending "> $FSCK_LOGFILE 2>&1".
For sysvinit it saves to /var/log/fsck/... since sysvinit hasn't kept
up with the changes that has been made on the initramfs-tools (and
systemd) side. If checkroot and checkfs files where updated to
match initramfs-tools (FSCK_LOGFILE pointing to /run) then I guess
logsave could be avoided in sysvinit as well.

Since initscripts (src:sysvinit) is not part of a default install anymore
and if you do switch over to sysvinit-core you likely also want e2fsprogs
anyway I don't see how a dependency would hurt.
For initramfs-tools the situation is that it's already not part of a
"minimal" (debootstrap --variant=minbase) install which would be the
recommended one for containers, etc. For the "normal install" case
initramfs-tools will be installed but then you very likely also want
e2fsprogs installed anyway so I don't see how a dependency would hurt
there either. Note: even if e2fsprogs drops Essential flag it would
still be part of default installs (even minimal installs unless it's
priority is lowered to 'important' instead of 'required').

Given this I would suggest tagging this bug report 'wontfix' and
closing it.

Do you see anything I've missed?

Regards,
Andreas Henriksson