sysctl errors from bad /etc/sysctl.d conf files making packages uninstallable
On Sun, Nov 01, 2009 at 01:28:20PM -0800, Scott Ritchie wrote:
> The root cause is this: sysctl is throwing an error when it encounters
> an /etc/sysctl.d/foo.conf file that contains keys it doesn't use. How
> these keys got onto the system is somewhat mysterious -- most likely
> cause is they're conf files from an older version of some other package
> (Wine's .conf file is a single line and works fine).
There are only a handful of packages in the archive using this facility.
Have you investigated what the actual files are that users have on their
systems when running into this problem?
> This error propagates through upstart and causes dpkg --configure to
> panic, making the package uninstallable. This is obviously bad.
> So it seems like we have 3 options:
> 1) Quiet down sysctl so it doesn't throw these errors on unknown
> commands. As far as I can tell, it's undocumented if sysctl gives a
> different exit status for unknown commands and genuine errors, so
> there's no good way to tell them apart.
> 2) Change procps upstart job to not care about sysctl errors. I believe
> debian does something similar.
> 3) Change every package with a sysctl.d conffile to ignore start procps
> errors (eg start procps || true).
According to the manpage, 'sysctl -e' has the effect of ignoring key errors.
That seems to me like the right place to handle this, instead of requiring
other packages to ignore all errors from sysctl.
--
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Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world.
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sysctl errors from bad /etc/sysctl.d conf files making packages uninstallable
