Bug 554986 - there is no need for yum lock when pirut is idle
Summary: there is no need for yum lock when pirut is idle
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED CANTFIX
Alias: None
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5
Classification: Red Hat
Component: pirut
Version: 5.4
Hardware: All
OS: Linux
low
medium
Target Milestone: rc
: ---
Assignee: James Antill
QA Contact: Red Hat Satellite QA List
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2010-01-13 10:46 UTC by Petr Sklenar
Modified: 2013-01-10 10:38 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

Fixed In Version:
Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 2010-01-13 21:49:26 UTC
Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:


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Description Petr Sklenar 2010-01-13 10:46:56 UTC
Description of problem:
Let pirut only running and doing nothing , it holds yum lock - its not needed.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
pirut-1.3.28-17.el5

How reproducible:
always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. start pirut
2. use yum; yum repolist
  
Actual results:
[root@dhcp-28-219 ~]# pirut &
[1] 10277 &
[root@dhcp-28-219 ~]# yum repolist
Loaded plugins: rhnplugin, security
Existing lock /var/run/yum.pid: another copy is running as pid 10277.

Expected results:
when pirut is idle and doing no updates there is no need to hold lock. 

Additional info:

Comment 1 James Antill 2010-01-13 14:29:27 UTC
 Yeh, it is needed ... it's basically a running version of yum, with a GUI, kind of like if you started yum shell, and left it open.
 So if any of the yum data changes under it, bad things will happen.

Comment 2 John W. Lockhart 2010-01-13 17:28:43 UTC
So why shouldn't the lock time out (perhaps configurably), and a refresh happen when activity resumes?  (Somewhat like a web session timing out due to inactivity.)

We've already seen this behavior interfere with other use of yum.  Not only does the pirut user lose data when the process is tracked down and killed, but others get to figure out what's holding the lock and then kill it off...

Are any other system-wide services blockable so quietly and easily?  Is it obvious to users that leaving pirut idle will inconvenience all other potential users of yum?  

The behavior might be okay on a single-user system, but should be re-thought for multi-user/multi-admin systems.  

Please re-consider the 'CantFix'.

Comment 4 James Antill 2010-01-13 21:51:32 UTC
If you are really worried about it, feel free to open an RFE against pirut to work out when it's been "idle" for too long and then auto shutdown. That's probably not trivial (esp. given the lack of outside testing we get on it now), but might be doable.


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