[Pkg-wpa-devel] Re: Bug#353530: Several package enhancements, fixing some flaws in maintainer scripts

[crimsun at fungus.sh.nu]

On Mon, Feb 20, 2006 at 10:18:52PM +1000, Kel Modderman wrote:
> > I really do not understand what you are doing with the init script. Why 
> > even bother to install it to /etc/init.d/ when it is not even registered 
> > with update-rc.d? Why install it manually? (dh_installinit probably does 
> > not like installing it there without calling update-rc.d perhaps) Would 
> > /usr/sbin not be a more appripriate place? Won't this permanently change 
> > the way debian-users use this package?

On Mon, Feb 20, 2006 at 01:52:53PM +0100, Reinhard Tartler wrote:
> Actually, we don't that init script at all. It should not be called at
> boot time. wpasupplicant should be started from
> /etc/network/if-pre-up.d/wpasupplicant, which just starts init.d. Daniel
> wanted to keep the init script at /etc/init.d, because some people are
> using it as pre-up in /etc/network/interfaces, so we don't break their
> systems at once. Personally, I'm not too convinced about that, and am
> inclined to break their systems now, with dropping
> /etc/init.d/wpasupplicant at once, and integrating that functionality in
> the pre-up and post-down hooks directly.

I'm not convinced that breaking existing systems is the right way to do
things in the short run. Yes, we need to migrate from the initscript
eventually, but we'll end up re-rolling much of its functionality into
whatever we do. Current our ifupdown scheme is the right way for new
wpasupplicant installations, and existing installs will continue to
work (though the ifupdown scheme will simply be redundant for users who
have manually modified /etc/network/interfaces).

Obviously we all need to discuss the far-term migration path. Open
issues:
(1) Handling multiple wireless interfaces. Currently the method is
crude; we parse /etc/default/wpasupplicant.
(2) Packaging 0_5 branch versions instead of 0_4. This will be strongly
influenced by Etch's release date. I'm not in favour of dropping 0_5
packages into Debian's next stable release; how do you guys feel?

On Mon, Feb 20, 2006 at 10:18:52PM +1000, Kel Modderman wrote:
> > Can you please explain a little about how the end user will use this 
> > package now? What is the rough roadmap for this package (planned future 
> > changes)? Maybe then I will understand the current changes better, and 
> > can begin helping you with them instead of asking a million questions :-)

On Mon, Feb 20, 2006 at 01:52:53PM +0100, Reinhard Tartler wrote:
> As said, the plan is to move away wpasupplicant as system service. It
> should be called via if-pre-up.d and stopped in if-post-down.d. Perhaps
> we should also allow config files per interface in
> /etc/wpasupplicant/$INTERFACE?

That is a reasonable approach.

> That way you could run different configuration on different interfaces.
> Plus, upgrades will become easier. We could remove
> /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf, and let the user install a template from
> /usr/share/doc/wpasupplicant/examples/config.template to 
> /etc/wpasupllicant/$INTERFACE, maybe debconf driven (so that this
> becomes preseedable for easy cases like WPA_PSK).
> 
> Daniel, what do you think about this?

I think that's reasonable for work on the 0_5 branch. I'm a bit queasy
about chucking infrastructure for packages of 0_4.

One issue from reading BTS would be the need to preseed RSN/WPA with
the "proto" directive (#340291).

Thanks,
-- 
Daniel T. Chen            crimsun at ubuntu.com
GPG key:   www.sh.nu/~crimsun/pubkey.gpg.asc
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-wpa-devel/attachments/20060220/e9401a87/attachment.pgp