Bug 56746

Summary:	reinstalling initscripts doesn't fix missing links
Product:	[Retired] Red Hat Raw Hide	Reporter:	Jonathan Kamens <jik>
Component:	initscripts	Assignee:	Jeff Johnson <jbj>
Status:	CLOSED DEFERRED	QA Contact:	Brock Organ <borgan>
Severity:	medium	Docs Contact:
Priority:	medium
Version:	1.0
Target Milestone:	---
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	i386
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2001-12-02 14:46:03 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description Jonathan Kamens 2001-11-26 21:29:06 UTC

My hard disk was recently corrupted.  Unfortunately, most of the corruption
was to various subdirectories of /etc/init.d, so I had to erase the corrupt
directories and rebuild /etc/init.d/rc*.d.

I tried both "rpm -U --force initscripts-6.40.2-1.i386.rpm" and "rpm
--install --force initscripts-6.40.2-1.i386.rpm".  Both of those commands
ran, and "rpm --verify initscripts" says that there are no problems, but
neither of those commands regenerated missing symlinks, e.g.,
/etc/rc.d/rc6.d/S01reboot.

I see that the symlinks are marked %config(missingok) in the spec file.  I
believe this means that "rpm --verify" isn't supposed to complain about
them being missing, but does it also mean that upgrading or reinstalling
shouldn't create them if they're missing?  I find that hard to believe, but
if that is, indeed, correct behavior, then I think it's a problem to mark
these links "missingok", because it makes it very difficult to recover from
corrupt initscripts by reinstalling the package.

Comment 1 Bill Nottingham 2001-11-28 06:24:17 UTC

What happens if you remove the old package, and then install it?

Comment 2 Jonathan Kamens 2001-11-28 12:57:14 UTC

Unintalling and reinstalling works.  This is not surprising.  It's also not
really an answer this bug.  Reinstalling should work as well.  You can't expect
people to know that for this particular package they need to uninstall before
they can reinstall, especially since rpm won't even let them uninstall unless
they specify --nodeps.  Not to mention the fact that uninstalling initscripts is
rather dangerous -- what happens if your machine crashes in between when you
uninstall and when you reinstall?

Comment 3 Bill Nottingham 2001-11-28 14:41:22 UTC

Assigning to rpm; this doesn't really have anything to do with initscripts in
particular.

Comment 4 Jeff Johnson 2001-12-02 11:19:35 UTC

And this is exactly rpm %config(missingok) behavior.
Since the symlinks are part of runtime configuration,
there's simply no way to solve the problem in packaging.
Creating a symlink where there was none before is as
much a problem as not recreating a link.

Comment 5 Jonathan Kamens 2001-12-02 14:45:58 UTC

Fine, in that case, I don't think this is an rpm bug, I think it's a bug in the
initscripts packaging.  These links should not be "missingok".  I can't think of
any sane configuration in which these links would be missing.  Even if there is
such a configuration, it's surely a very small percentage of total initscripts
installation -- that is, if these links are missing, it's much more likely that
it's because there's a problem with the machine than because the sysadmin
removed the links intentionally and wants them to stay that way.  Therefore, the
links should not be marked missingok -- let the few admins who really mean for
them to be missing to deal with the extra "rpm --verify initscripts" output and
recreation of these links on upgrade, while for everybody else, the package will
behave in a saner, safer manner.

Comment 6 Jeff Johnson 2001-12-02 15:35:16 UTC

Your suggestion presumes that the links that should be created
is known at package install time, very often not the case. Heck
the runlevel isn't even known at initscripts package install time,
it depends on whether you want a GUI/TUI login.

Look, your analysis is dead on, but is insoluble within constraints
imposed by current technology. Is DEFERRED OK with you?
Just don't hold your breath for a solution. *Really*

Comment 7 Jonathan Kamens 2001-12-02 15:37:46 UTC

I don't think I understand the point you're trying to make.  All I'm proposing
is that the links which the initscripts package already creates when it is
initially installed get recreated when it's reinstalled.  Could you clarify why
that's a hard problem?  I don't get it.