[arch-general] Fix or not fix? install scriptlets with user handling.

[Jan de Groot]

On Sat, 2009-05-30 at 08:37 -0500, Dan McGee wrote:
> 
> I think I can safely speak for most of the developers when I say Arch
> will *never* get in the business of restarting daemons. Ever. If we do
> it is a bug, because the implications of it are just too great. Think
> about upgrading the httpd package on a relatively high-traffic site
> (e.g. archlinux.org). Think we want the webserver to just restart
> whenever it wants? Now do the same with xinetd, mysql, and you start
> to see huge problems.

To process a kernel update, your system should be rebooted too. Should
we do that from post_upgrade also? :P

I agree with Dan here. I don't like packages restarting or stopping crap
behind my back. Since we do not have configuration file merging
integrated in pacman, I also see no way to do this in a good fashion.
Let's say you upgrade apache 1.3 to 2.2, after which the configuration
scheme has changed completely. Just stop the old apache, install apache
2.2, install a shitload of pacnew files, start apache and it fails and
won't come up again until the administrator updates all configs. Compare
this to the case where apache will keep running until the next run of
logrotate where it will crash then.
Another thing is upgrading in chroots. Last week I've been updating a
debian etch chroot install to debian lenny. I had to edit the postrm and
postinst files for postfix and snmpd, because they couldn't stop and
start postfix and snmpd. Apt would not let me continue without fixing
this first. I ended up with two chroots that didn't allow me to umount
the bind-mounted /proc, /dev and such, with no way to find out which
stupid daemon was still running inside the chroot.