Bug 2208505

Summary:	dnf man doesn't have any information about parameter 'enabled_metadata'
Product:	Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8	Reporter:	Pranav Lawate <plawate>
Component:	dnf	Assignee:	Jaroslav Rohel <jrohel>
Status:	CLOSED WONTFIX	QA Contact:	swm-qe
Severity:	low	Docs Contact:
Priority:	unspecified
Version:	8.7	CC:	james.antill, jrohel, mmuehlfe
Target Milestone:	rc	Keywords:	Triaged
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	x86_64
OS:	Linux
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Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	If docs needed, set a value
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Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2023-07-31 09:19:31 UTC	Type:	Bug
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
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Embargoed:

Description Pranav Lawate 2023-05-19 09:50:42 UTC

Description of problem:
There exists a parameter 'enabled_metadata' with very scarce information over upstream or internet for that matter.

Only information available is one liner on fedora doc:
~~~
The repo file has the setting enabled_metadata=1. This means that some tools can optionally retrieve the metadata from this repository to provide a list of its contents to the user. The option is not used by yum or dnf.
~~~
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Third_Party_Repository_Policy

We have a Fedora BUG 1569862, won't fix closed.
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1569862

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
[plawate@plawate dnf]$ cat /etc/redhat-release
Red Hat Enterprise Linux release 8.7 (Ootpa)
[plawate@plawate dnf]$ rpm -q dnf
dnf-4.7.0-11.el8.noarch

How reproducible:
100%

Steps to Reproduce:
1. 2. Search for "enabled_metadata"

Actual results:
Parameter is not described in the man page.

Expected results:
Parameter should be described in the man page.

Additional info:
Fedora uses this parameter in a repo that we ship in the default installation but it's not documented.

That's why I consider this as a *UX (user expierence) bug* and, in my opinion, this ticket should be re-opened and fixed.

Instead of having a mysterious parameter in the configs and provide no option for the user to find out what it does, we should do one of the following:

1) Do not use this parameter in any repo.
2) Document the parameter in the man page. The description can mention that dnf does not use this parameter, but other tools can use it to optionally retrieve the metadata from the repository to provide a list of its contents to the user.

Comment 1 Jaroslav Rohel 2023-05-29 12:19:57 UTC

> The repo file has the setting enabled_metadata=1. This means that some tools can optionally retrieve the metadata from this repository to provide a list of its contents to the user. The option is not used by yum or dnf.

Yes it is true.
However, it is an interesting approach to describe in the DNF documentation a configuration parameter that can be used by other applications, but DNF itself does not use the "enable_metadata" parameter and does not even know about its existence.

Comment 2 Jaroslav Mracek 2023-06-08 08:00:25 UTC

The value is unused by DNF (cannot be used by dnf) therefore we can close the bug report or we can document it as unused by dnf. I would recommend to close it in favor of other work.

The configuration is used by `packagekit`.

Comment 3 Pranav Lawate 2023-06-26 01:32:52 UTC

Hello Jaroslav,

 I will probably create a KCS for notifying customers asking for this. The number of customers who would want this is pretty low so I guess we can skip this in favor something important that warrants prioritization.