[pkg-lighttpd] Bug#642604: Bug#642604: Bug#642604: lighttpd always binds to IPv6 on TCP port 80

[Adam Nielsen]

Thanks both for your replies, I have responded to both below.

> From: Olaf van der Spek <olafvdspek at gmail.com>
>> Those people using a configuration management system like Puppet
>> won't get to see dpkg's nice output, and will have to merge the changes by
>> hand in their repos and push them out to all their machines.
>
> Isn't that a limitation of Puppet?

It is a limitation I think of any/every configuration control system.

> The point is that it's not a perfect improvement. Having conf bits in
> more files means it's harder for a normal user to find/read/update all
> bits.

That's true, but then in this case the user already has to find/read/update 
the bits in the conf-available directory so one more split shouldn't come as a 
surprise.

> We do agree that (in principle) it would be nice to support stuff like
> Puppet better.
> So let's say we've got lighttpd.conf and platform.conf. Where would
> the ipv6 include go? I'd say platform.conf.
> Since you wanted to disable the ipv6 include, you'd have to modify
> platform.conf and you'd have the same problem as you do now, right?

Not quite.  Since enabling IPv6 support works the same on any distro, it 
shouldn't go in the platform-specific section.  I would say, as a rough guide, 
anything you *must* change from the upstream lighttpd.conf to make it fit into 
Debian (user/group, pidfile, etc.) would go into platform.conf, and anything 
you change just to make it nicer (like IPv6 or the default module list) can go 
into some other file.  For example, I would only expect these options to be in 
platform.conf:

server.upload-dirs          = ( "/var/cache/lighttpd/uploads" )
server.errorlog             = "/var/log/lighttpd/error.log"
server.pid-file             = "/var/run/lighttpd.pid"
server.username             = "www-data"
server.groupname            = "www-data"
compress.cache-dir          = "/var/cache/lighttpd/compress/"

> From: Arno Töll <debian at toell.net>
> You always need to check major upgrades for changes and
> incompatibilities anyway. In particular there is no guarantee your old
> configuration file will work with the new daemon version.

With a new daemon version yes, but with a security update or similar where the 
version is unchanged it may not be necessary.  Say for example you had 
accidentally set the lighttpd user to root and the default document-root to 
"/".  The web server would still work and when the mistake is realised the 
platform.conf could be easily updated to correct the mistake, without 
requiring any config merging.

> I just hate splitted configuration files personally because I prefer one
> single file where I can see all things I need to know at one sight.
> Sometimes it makes sense to split files, e.g. for "actual configuration"
> vs "site/vhost configuration" but most of the time settings spread
> randomly throughout different files are hard to read, to understand and
> to configure in my opinion.

That is a valid point, and unfortunately not one I can counter argue.  If you 
are editing by hand then yes, a single file is nice, but if you are "editing 
by machine" then separate files are easier to handle.  Perhaps, if you have a 
large enough file, it will also be difficult to find the section you want. But 
with nicely-named separate files, it can be made easy to locate the section 
you are interested in.

> I'm afraid, but we have no influence at all what other distributions
> choose as configuration layout and/or which files they ship. Eventually
> Suse (or whatever) still continues to ship a lighttpd.conf happily
> specifying their own pidfile stuff there.

One more reason not to use Suse then, if they make it difficult :-)  Also you 
say you have no influence over other distros, but I don't think you give 
yourself enough credit.  There are many distributions that are based on Debian!

> If you want to introduce such a change among all Linux distributions,
> you better get upstream to split their configuration files out of the
> box to make sure distributions will follow more likely.

This is an interesting idea, but upon closer investigation, probably not 
practical.  The upstream config file has defaults like storing the log files 
next to the document-root, which the Debian package has overridden and changed 
to /var/log.  So in upstream, there would be no need to split that option out, 
but in Debian there is because of the change.  So I would argue that since you 
are changing the option anyway, you may as well change it in a separate file :-)

Thanks again for being so willing to discuss this, you have given me plenty to 
think about!

Cheers,
Adam.