Re: [caiman-discuss] OK to copy AI install_log to /a on errors?

[Jack Schwartz]

Hi Jan.

Thanks for shedding some light on this...
On 05/28/10 01:34 AM, Jan Damborsky wrote:
Hi Jack,


On 05/28/10 02:10 AM, Jack Schwartz wrote:
Hi everyone.

Currently AI doesn't copy the logfile if the install fails because of 
the DDU or install errors.  How come?  I would like to fix this. Mary 
also filed bug 16088 against Driver-Update on this very issue.

But I wonder why AI wasn't copying the logfile on errors even before 
Driver-Update came along.  All I can come up with is:

- if /a wasn't mounted, the copy could generate additional errors.  
(Seems like a small issue to me.)

Th original idea behind this behavior was that if the installation fails,
then we should take the shortest path to abort in order to leave the 
system
as untouched as possible for the inspection.
OK...
Also target BE is left mounted on /a in this case (assuming the 
failure happened
after BE was created and mounted).
Sure, and it is important that this functionality remains.

In that case, we wanted to avoid cascade of error messages not related
to the failure itself - they would be confusing and could mask the real
problem - as an recent example, see
https://defect.opensolaris.org/bz/show_bug.cgi?id=11500#c8
OK.  I suspected this, but wanted to make sure there wasn't some other 
reason as well...
Does anyone have a good reason why I shouldn't attempt to copy the 
logfile to /a whether or not any install errors occurred?

I can see that we could make this step more robust by checking for
presence of /a/var/sadm/system/logs directory first and copy log files
only if it exists.
Yes, I was thinking along these lines as well.
I am also wondering if we need to enhance current error handling to 
account
for situations like some of DDU failures which if my understanding is 
correct
are being treated as 'non-fatal' errors ?
Currently, if the DDU is unsuccessful at installing at least one needed 
package to the booted environment, a warning is issued but the install 
continues.  The idea here is that if something critical was missing the 
install would fail anyhow, but the install should be attempted.

If the DDU is unsuccessful at installing at least one needed package to 
the target, there is a chance the system might not be bootable.  In this 
case the install terminates abnormally, to give the user a chance to 
inspect the system before rebooting.  There is a message displayed about 
this just before termination.

Please feel free to let me know if you have ideas to enhance/improve this.

    Thanks,
    Jack

Jan


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