[Pkg-utopia-maintainers] Bug#527846: Bug#527846: consolekit: does not provide a init.d script (how do I restart the daemon?)

[Francesco Poli]

On Wed, 13 May 2009 01:26:56 +0200 Michael Biebl wrote:

> Francesco Poli wrote:
[...]
> > I found out that restarting dbus with
> > 
> >   # /etc/init.d/dbus restart
> > 
> > seems to also restart console-kit-daemon (as one would expect, since
> > this daemon is managed by D-Bus, as you explained).
> > 
> > Does this strategy also have bad consequences?
> 
> what do you mean by "this strategy"?

I mean "is restarting dbus (in order to also restart
console-kit-daemon) a good idea?"
It seems that it isn't, judging from what you said (see below)...

> 
> > 
> > P.S.: is there any progress on fixing this bug?
> >       was it forwarded upstream?
> 
> I talked to upstream about this quite some time ago. There is no real interest
> by upstream to address this.

That is to say, there is no real interest by upstream to address a bug
that causes objective problems to many people?
This is really awkward!

> The simple advice by upstream is, to never restart
> dbus (or console-kit-daemon for that matter) and reboot when necessary.

So the issue does not only affect console-kit-daemon, but dbus as well,
and the whole D-Bus managed infrastructure, I guess...
This is really worrying: there's another operating system where the
need for reboot at almost every software upgrade or installation is
regarded as normal.  It's a very popular operating system, but many of
us Debian users/developers/supporters often criticize its flaws...
I would rather avoid seeing Debian GNU/Linux get a little more similar
to that other operating system...  :-(

Actually, taking a look at dbus filed bug reports shows that many
people have been complaining about the "thou shalt not restart me"
issue for quite some time.
See especially bug #495257:

| I disagree that the DBus daemon should never be restarted because the
| NetworkManager developers say so.  This is a step towards the "dark
| side" - rebooting your box after performing an upgrade is the M$ way of
| doing things.  Solid engineering can prevent this.
|
[Tyson Clugg in http://bugs.debian.org/495257#10]

| I do regard programs not coping gracefully with a dbus-daemon crash or restart
| as being buggy and fixed several of them over the years. For most things it's
| not that hard to fix.
| 
| If you want a real solution, then dbus should support restarting/reloading
| itself in place like init does.
|
[Sjoerd Simons in http://bugs.debian.org/495257#56]

> 
> I don't really have much time atm to work on that myself, so if you want to see
> this fixed, it's a good opportunity to get involved and write a patch.

I am afraid that making dbus and console-kit-daemon (and what else)
gracefully restartable requires a good knowledge of their internals, in
order to avoid implementing the wrong strategy and so forth...
I cannot become knowledgeable enough for this task in a short time.

It seems really strange that no upstream developer or distribution
package maintainer is interested in working this issue out...  :-(

-- 
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..................................................... Francesco Poli .
 GnuPG key fpr == C979 F34B 27CE 5CD8 DC12  31B5 78F4 279B DD6D FCF4
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