Why is manual intervention required anyway?

yaffare · 2011-12-29 18:45:27

Hello,

recently there were 2 announcements about "manual intervention required" in the news,
filesystem upgrade
initscripts update

Questions:

1. Do I have to make these changes also, when I do a clean install with the actual image from 2011.08.19?
If so, they should be mentioned right in the download page, or in the cli when I upgrade, otherwise
I have to look through all the news back until the date where the image is from.

2. Why is manual intervention required anyway, just to delete a stupid file? If the problem is, that the package
does not own the file, then why do you not create a mother package that can do everything for such cases?

Sorry, but I have to add this one: "You should change KISS to KRTFM (keep RTFM)"

Thanks.

Meyithi · 2011-12-29 18:51:36

Funny how both articles you linked to explains the reasons behind the manual intervention, which means this post is just flaming/trolling I guess and I'm wasting my time here as it's probably going to end up in the bin.

Oh well..

karol · 2011-12-29 18:54:33

1. Arch user is expected to read the front page announcements before upgrading, so yes ATM you have to look through all the news back to the date the image is from.
2. Not following. You mean that we should have a package that does exactly what?

yaffare · 2011-12-29 19:04:29

Thanks karol for answering question 1. question 2 is not answered.

If I can delete a file manually, than a script can do the same, as its the same for file for every user and every user who has installed the package has to delete the file.

Basically my question is: Why do you not create a workaround, so that manual intervention is not required?
Obviously this is possible, my suggestion would the thing with the mother-package, that can execute any shell command without restrictions, maybe there is a better solution.

Also, why not put the the "manual intervention required", links on the download page?

Last edited by yaffare (2011-12-29 19:10:25)

wonder · 2011-12-29 19:06:26

manual intervention is required because those files are not tracked by pacman and we moved them inside a package to be tracked.

yaffare wrote:

Also, why not put the the "manual intervention required", links on the download page?

you won't notice this problems if you use netinstall and we always recommended those.

IMO we should stop proving core installations

Last edited by wonder (2011-12-29 19:24:08)

Trilby · 2011-12-29 19:25:20

"Also, why not put the the "manual intervention required", links on the download page?"

That sounds like a good idea, but it may just be a practicality issue. If this were done, then the site maintainers would have to update such instructions every time a new installation image were uploaded. As is a new installation image can be put up whenever appropriate without having to worry about what information needs to be appended on the download page as all the relevant info is on the front page.

Is there a note on the download page to check the front page - perhaps there should be. But I've always been a fan of the Do Not Repeat Yourself philosophy. Putting the same information in to many places can just get confusing, and hard to maintain.

I suspect practicality issues also block the all-powerful package installation as well. If packages were unrestricted in what they could do to a users system it seems this could pose serious risks either through malicious intent, or just mistakes in packages.

yaffare · 2011-12-29 19:38:26

ok guys, I can see your point. Just thought this will cause broken or incomplete packages for new users for sure, which should not be in the interest of arch.

Are you sure netinstall solves the problem?

Because I would think the filesystem package is part of the mother-installation anyway, no mather if I install netinstall or core.

karol · 2011-12-29 19:40:04

wonder wrote:

IMO we should stop proving core installations

What's the use case for them?

I quite like the instructions here: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=57205 but maybe we indeed should at least link to them from the download page or ...?

anonymous_user · 2011-12-29 19:41:40

@yaffare - When you do a netinstall, it downloads the latest versions of packages (including filesystem).

Last edited by anonymous_user (2011-12-29 19:42:26)

Allan · 2011-12-29 19:50:40

Manual interventions is required because we are rolling release. That means we can not just save big changes for every six months.

yaffare · 2011-12-29 20:00:32

Allan wrote:

Manual interventions is required because we are rolling release. That means we can not just save big changes for every six months.

Thats not an argument, what does it has to do with rolling release or not? Nothing.
There are arguments like Trilby said with security issues or that its too much effort for your team or you think its not worth the time.

Willie Green · 2011-12-29 20:39:07

anonymous_user wrote:

@yaffare - When you do a netinstall, it downloads the latest versions of packages (including filesystem).

Well that's certainly a relief!
I just did a new netinstall two days ago, and although I haven't experienced anything other than the normal installation headaches, I was concerned about the manual intervention curveball.
Now that I know I don't have to worry about that, I can go back to the normal struggles of customizing my installation.
Thanks for the info!

tomk · 2011-12-29 21:29:45

yaffare, don't just talk about this stuff. If you believe the process can be improved, submit a detailed feature request, ideally with appropriate patches attached.

yaffare · 2011-12-29 21:52:23

I will take a closer look on how the packaging exactly works and then post my solution here.

Awebb · 2011-12-29 22:10:56

There was a way more complicated manual intervention a few months ago, when something in the pacman database changed, so we had to run "pacman-db-upgrade".

http://allanmcrae.com/2011/03/pacman-3-5-0-released/

So, the last release was 2010.05, there was no news on the front page and I'm not sure, if pacman told me what to do when it failed after a fresh netinst. I was really lucky that I hang out in the forums every day and that browse through the planet once a week. I was amused, when I read this news, claiming that the netinst is now finally broken enough to force a new release. A package manager with a "broken" database that needs to be fixed manually after installing the system is obviously not broken enough :-)

I'm not complaining here. I am happy for every news I read about manual intervention, because the Arch devs and news posters could be complete douches and tell us to read that frickin' mailing lists. I'm also happy those things are not done automatically, because if there's a file, there is a certain chance that I have modified it in any way, for whatever reason.

tomk · 2011-12-29 22:55:41

yaffare wrote:

I will take a closer look on how the packaging exactly works and then post my solution here.

No... post a feature request in the bugtracker, as already advised.

stefanwilkens · 2011-12-29 23:29:05

I'll add my 2 cents, I don't believe this point has been made abundantly clear yet:

Manual intervention is sometimes required because we don't want to wipe user configuration or possibly break the system. While this is usually solved by installing duplicate files as .pacnew files and informing the user that he / she needs to manually merge the original file with the .pacnew file (migrating possible user configuration along with it), this isn't always a possible solution.

We can't do that if a file holding possible user configuration needs to be changed, but is system critical. An example:
Let's say grub is updated to a new version. Due to a change in grub, the syntax in grub's configuration file menu.lst is changed. We can't make this update for the user because we can't be sure what the user has added to this file. We also can't install the new file as a .pacnew because the new version of grub is not compatible with the old style configuration file, the system may not start up at all! Hey, we could just delete the old file and put the new file in its place, but the user will have lost all his configuration. Nobody wants that. Imagine having to fix your configuration every time you update. No thanks!

The only decent way to solve this is to request manual intervention, there is no reliable way to do this automatically. This has nothing to do with the amount of effort this would take, some of these upgrades simply can't be resolved automagically. This also nicely explains allan's post:

yaffare wrote:

Allan wrote:
Manual interventions is required because we are rolling release. That means we can not just save big changes for every six months.
Thats not an argument, what does it has to do with rolling release or not? Nothing.
There are arguments like Trilby said with security issues or that its too much effort for your team or you think its not worth the time.

Non-rolling releases can postpone updates that would cause system breakage like the grub update in my example, a rolling release like Arch Linux can't do that. We don't have a 6-monthly 'stable' base to work from, or the option to let updates that would require manual intervention wait till the next 'stable' release.

Distributions like Ubuntu and Fedora don't require manual intervention because the situations where these manual interventions are required are pushed to the new release of the distribution, or are simply allowed to wipe user configuration. The downside to this being that users of those distributions have to wait for a next release to be able to use the new version of some applications.

Now as for this:

yaffare wrote:

If I can delete a file manually, than a script can do the same, as its the same for file for every user and every user who has installed the package has to delete the file.
Basically my question is: Why do you not create a workaround, so that manual intervention is not required?

You, as a person, can tell what changes you have made to the first file. You can also tell if those changes need to be put into the new file, and where they should go. You can tell this because you're an intelligent person capable of reasoning, a computer can't do this. We can create workarounds for quite a few situations, but we can't ever be 100% sure what a user changed or wants to change. We need the user to tell us what he / she wants, thus we require manual intervention.

I hope this explains the need for manual intervention.

Last edited by stefanwilkens (2011-12-29 23:34:49)

Allan · 2011-12-30 03:13:21

yaffare wrote:

Allan wrote:
Manual interventions is required because we are rolling release. That means we can not just save big changes for every six months.
Thats not an argument, what does it has to do with rolling release or not? Nothing.

No it has everything to do with rolling release. Fixed point release distro break shit like this every release. It is just all hidden because they do it all at once and get you to reinstall or run some update script that never quite works...

ShoeUnited · 2011-12-30 22:28:40

And here I thought the reason was always "Allan broke it.™"

Seriously though, good insight provided into the why's. I'm just an eensy bit concerned about this whole /proc/self/mounts thing. Guess I'm gonna have to go read through the mailing list archives again. ;_;

Anyway, cheers on the distro as always and don't forget:

"Allan broke it.™"

-Shoe

Arch Linux

#1 2011-12-29 18:45:27

Why is manual intervention required anyway?

#2 2011-12-29 18:51:36

Re: Why is manual intervention required anyway?

#3 2011-12-29 18:54:33

Re: Why is manual intervention required anyway?

#4 2011-12-29 19:04:29

Re: Why is manual intervention required anyway?

#5 2011-12-29 19:06:26

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#6 2011-12-29 19:25:20

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#7 2011-12-29 19:38:26

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#8 2011-12-29 19:40:04

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#9 2011-12-29 19:41:40

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#10 2011-12-29 19:50:40

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#11 2011-12-29 20:00:32

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#12 2011-12-29 20:39:07

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#13 2011-12-29 21:29:45

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#14 2011-12-29 21:52:23

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#15 2011-12-29 22:10:56

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#16 2011-12-29 22:55:41

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#17 2011-12-29 23:29:05

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#18 2011-12-30 03:13:21

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#19 2011-12-30 22:28:40

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