[arch-general] Package grub Encourages Warnings to be Ignored.

[Eli Schwartz]

On 12/8/18 3:55 AM, Ralph Corderoy wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Having spotted
> 
>     warning: /boot/grub/grub.cfg saved as /boot/grub/grub.cfg.pacsave
> 
> during today's large package upgrade, I went to /boot/grub afterwards
> expecting work to do.  grub.cfg.pacsave didn't exist.  `pacman -Ql grub'
> showed grub doesn't own anything in /boot.  Google led me to
> https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=242285 where Salkay had
> earlier started along the same path.
> 
> The warning has wasted our time, and the forum's conclusion is `ignore
> the warning'.  Encouraging warnings to be ignored is a bad idea; I don't
> suppose some here are too happy when a user turns up with a problem and
> the answer was under their nose but they `ignored the warning'.
> 
> Can a better solution to this be engineered?

This is a one-time event where a package has removed a backup file from
the package. It happened because the file should *never* have been
packaged by pacman to begin with, and we fixed that bug by removing it
from the package -- however, there is no way for a package to declare
this, so it is hardly possible to stop pacman from providing that message.

See https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/57949 for more details.

Nevertheless, the package maintainer determined to have the post_update
script restore the file for users in order to prevent an easily
avoidable situation where users would need to fix their *boot*
configuration after a routine update.

Nowhere in that thread you point to has anyone stated to "ignore pacsave
warnings, they don't matter". Someone did point to the install script in
order to help clear up what happened in a seemingly impossible
situation, but that is not anywhere near the same thing.

...

So just for the record, it is wise of you to ask what happened, because
this update was indeed confusing and violates user expectations, albeit
for a good cause. (I'm less happy that you instantly decided we have
instituted a distro-wide policy to ignore warnings.)

Could we have handled this better? Yes -- if I were the person who
performed that update, I would have added a message echoed in the
post_upgrade:

"Performing one-time restore of user-generated grub.cfg due to removing
it from the packaged files -- feel free to ignore the pacsave warning
this once."

Is it the end of the world that this was not done? Hardly -- I assume
people either did their due diligence, and discovered the thread you
pointed to, or did their due diligence and discovered the install script
contents (maybe by looking up the PKGBUILD history for the grub
package), or, sadly, simply aren't the type of person to look at
pacman's output.

Either way, there is not much to be done about it after the fact. Much
like there's not much to be done about packaging the grub.cfg in the
first place, 6 years after the fact, except to fix what we can and
resolve to do better next time.

-- 
Eli Schwartz
Bug Wrangler and Trusted User

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