[Pkg-utopia-maintainers] Bug#428669: Bug#428669: dbus upgrade stops network-manager, drops network for the duration

[Michael Biebl]

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Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho wrote:
> Package: dbus
> Version: 1.1.0-1
> 
> Preparing to replace dbus 1.0.2-5 (using .../dbus_1.1.0-1_amd64.deb) ...
> Stopping network connection manager: NetworkManager.
> Stopping Hardware abstraction layer: hald.
> Stopping DHCP D-Bus daemon: dhcdbd.
> Stopping Avahi mDNS/DNS-SD Daemon: avahi-daemon.
> Stopping System Tools Backends: system-tools-backends.
> Stopping system message bus: dbus.
> Unpacking replacement dbus ...
> [... lots of other packages unpacked and configured ...]
> Setting up dbus (1.1.0-1) ...
> Installing new version of config file /etc/dbus-1/session.conf ...
> Installing new version of config file /etc/init.d/dbus ...
> Starting system message bus: dbus.
> Starting System Tools Backends: system-tools-backends.
> Starting Avahi mDNS/DNS-SD Daemon: avahi-daemon.
> Starting DHCP D-Bus daemon: dhcdbd.
> Starting Hardware abstraction layer: hald.
> Starting network connection manager: NetworkManager.
> 
> Notice how dbus kills network-manager, which in turn deconfigures the 
> network.  It can take a long time before dbus is configured and 
> network-manager is started.
> 
> I don't think it is sane to drop network during a routine upgrade.  I'll 
> let you and the NM maintainer to figure out which one is the culprit 
> here :)  People on #d-d argued the bug belongs in dbus.
> 
> (Note that NM is installed by default on desktops.)

NetworkManager has to be restarted during dbus upgrades, because being a D-Bus
application, it won't survive if the system bus is killed.

One option could be, to not restart dbus at all on upgrades. But this means that
security fixes etc are not applied. It will also very likely introduce very
subtle bugs. So this is a no-go imho.

The second option could be, to make NM not shutdown the interfaces when it
stops. I don't like this option very much either, because then the device will
not be deconfigured correctly, and things like releasing a dchp lease etc won't
work anymore.

As NM is mainly conceived for the laptop/desktop case anyway, where you are
physically connected to the machine, I don't see a big problem, when the network
is deconfigured for a short time during upgrades.
The case is of different for servers, where you do upgrades via ssh.
But NM is not intended for servers anyway.


Cheers,
Michael

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