[arch-dev-public] [RFC] filesystem-2012.3-1

[Tom Gundersen]

Hi guys,

We want to tidy up the /var/{lock,run} situation. They should be
symlinks to /run{,/lock}.

Currently they are shipped as regular directories in the filesystem
package, and on the next boot they are replaced by symlinks (by
initscripts). It has been like this for about a year, and I'd like to
fix this up properly by shipping the symlinks in the filesystem
package.

The upgrade requires user intervention:

# rm /var/{lock,run} ; pacman -Syu

Deleting these symlinks/folders on a running system might have
unintended side effects, but as far as we have been able to figure out
nothing fatal. To be on the safe side, I think we should (in a news
item) advice users to shut down anything going on in the background to
the extent possible before doing the upgrade and reboot after the
upgrade is finished.

Any thoughts on this?

A request: it would be really ideal if we could roll a new installer
release as soon as this is out, so people don't have to deal with
these sorts of things on their first upgrade after install. Would that
be possible?

Cheers,

Tom