[arch-dev-public] Moving from procps to procps-ng?

[Eric Bélanger]

On Sat, Apr 28, 2012 at 2:07 PM, Dave Reisner <d at falconindy.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Apr 28, 2012 at 08:49:56PM +0300, Evangelos Foutras wrote:
>> On Sat, Apr 28, 2012 at 8:16 PM, Dan McGee <dpmcgee at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > On Tue, Apr 24, 2012 at 3:58 AM, Tom Gundersen <teg at jklm.no> wrote:
>> >> On Apr 24, 2012 1:29 AM, "Eric Bélanger" <snowmaniscool at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >>>
>> >>> Hi,
>> >>>
>> >>> The procps project didn't had any new release for a while and the
>> >>> current package use a dozen of patches to fix miscellenaous things.
>> >>> I'm thinking about switching to procps-ng[1]. Procps-ng is a fork of
>> >>> procps by Debian, Fedora and openSUSE.  Gentoo is also using procps-ng
>> >>> (although, like Debian, the package is still named procps).
>> >>>
>> >>> I also intend to replace the home made sysctl.conf that we currently
>> >>> provide by the upstream version of that file.
>> >>>
>> >>> Any comments, objections?
>> >>
>> >> +1
>> >
>> > Objection to the now-shipped /etc/sysctl.conf file, so I'm giving a -1
>> > signoff here. It moved my existing file to a .pacsave, and the
>> > defaults are total shit, not to mention the file is a formatting
>> > nightmare. Some lowlights:
>> >
>> > # see the evil packets in your log files
>> > net/ipv4/conf/all/log_martians=1
>> >
>> > # makes you vulnerable or not :-)
>> > net/ipv4/conf/all/accept_redirects=0
>> > net/ipv4/conf/all/accept_source_route=0
>> > net/ipv4/icmp_echo_ignore_broadcasts =1
>> >
>> >
>> > # This limits PID values to 4 digits, which allows tools like ps
>> > # to save screen space.
>> > kernel/pid_max=10000
>>
>> +1.
>>
>> Let's keep the existing default sysctl.conf from procps.
>
> I'm not a fan of this either, but keeping the original config file means
> that we just rename procps-ng as procps, no?

The config file doesn't affect the package name so I'm not sure what
you're trying to say.

Anyway, the upstream sysctl.conf are exactly the same for both procps
and procps-ng. For the procps package in [core], the upstream
sysctl.conf is being replaced by a homemade sysctl.conf.  From what I
can gather, it was added to the package several years ago when no
config file was provided by upstream.  As several  people don't like
the upstream sysctl.conf (I had assumed that it was using sane
defaults), I see two possible fixes:

1) Replace the upstream sysctl.conf by the homemade one like we were
doing for procps
2) Keep the upstream sysctl.conf but change the default values

I don't mind either of these solutions so just let me know which one
you prefer. In the case of #2, you'll need to tell me what changes you
want to make.

Eric

>Any other way will result
> in /etc/sysctl.conf being renamed with .pacsave.
>
> d