[pkg-ntp-maintainers] Bug#606107: Bug#606107: ntp: handle empty ntp.conf gracefully (working around system-tools-backends bug)

[Colin Watson]

On Wed, Dec 08, 2010 at 11:46:31PM +0200, Peter Eisentraut wrote:
> On ons, 2010-12-08 at 13:40 +0000, Colin Watson wrote:
> > > I don't really agree with these changes.  An empty ntp.conf is an error
> > > and should not be masked.
> > 
> > What useful information can this state possibly convey?
> 
> That state that something is broken.

I'd sympathise with that if I could understand why cleaning up the
breakage would actually be harmful.

> > > Why not just fix the GNOME side and let that be it?
> > 
> > Think of the user.  system-tools-backends has left the empty ntp.conf
> > around, without any hint to the user about this; now installing the ntp
> > package (which gnome-system-tools does for you behind the scenes if you
> > ask it to set up time synchronisation, but might of course also happen
> > by hand) incomprehensibly still leaves an empty ntp.conf, which as you
> > say is an error.  In what way is this better than just dealing with the
> > problem by removing the empty file so that a proper one can be put in
> > place?  I don't see who this benefits.
> 
> Can't system-tools-backends clean up the file that it had erroneously
> placed?

It would have to be done in a system-tools-backends maintainer script.
I'm not really sure why it's any better to do that in
system-tools-backends vs. in ntp; your argument is that it shouldn't be
cleaned up because it somehow conveys useful information that it's
broken, so how is system-tools-backends supposed to know that it's the
one that created the zero-length file rather than something else, given
that there's by definition no information in that file?  I don't see how
it's any better that way.

Regards,

-- 
Colin Watson                                       [cjwatson at debian.org]