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

[Eric Bélanger]

On Sat, Apr 28, 2012 at 5:05 PM, Dan McGee <dpmcgee at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Apr 28, 2012 at 1:52 PM, Eric Bélanger <snowmaniscool at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 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.
>
> I think #1 makes sense; we should ship exactly what we had before
> instead of upstream, although we may want to look through the upstream
> file and add some commented out versions of what is in there in a
> sanely formatted way.
>

Here's a tentative sysctl.conf : https://dev.archlinux.org/~eric/sysctl.conf
that I obtained with the help of Jan and Dave on IRC.  The unusefull
stuff from the upstream config have been dropped and the rest has been
commented out. I've also cleaned the syntax.

Eric


> The package name thing Dave was referring to is that our backup file
> handling is less than ideal in the case of package replacements, as
> the user's file gets moved to pacsave rather than the expected
> behavior of the new file being installed to pacnew.
>
> -Dan