Package: wicd-daemon Version: 1.7.4+tb2-1 Severity: serious Dear Maintainer,
My home server is a headless box, administered from a vnc session tunnelled over ssh. It has no wifi adaptor, just a single ethernet port that is statically configured via /etc/network/interfaces. During today's package update my ssh connection died partway through, during setup of wicd-daemon. Last line was "Installing new version of config file /etc/wicd/encryption/templates/wpa2-peap ..." Then ssh refused to re-connect. I finally got re-connected after discovering that wicd-daemon had reconfigured eth0 to a different ip address. (Note that if this had been a remote box, then I might not have been able to discover the new ip address. Potentially this might lead require in person intervention in such cases). This behaviour is wrong on so many levels. 1. A package upgrade should never bring down an existing in-use interface without asking the user/admin first. (There is a reason that ssh takes care to not kill the existing session during package upgrades. Consider what would have happened if that had been a normal ssh session, and aptitude had stalled part way through asking for user input). 2. I don't think I have ever actually used wicd. Wicd-daemon should not assume that just because it is installed it owns all the network interfaces. It should only be touching interfaces it has configured/or the the user/admin requests that it configure. 3. Even if it needs to reconfigure all interfaces, and even if we assume that is owns all the network interfaces, it _must_ respect the admins static configuration in /etc/network/interfaces , unless the user/admin specifically requests it to reconfigure that interface. Personally I think it should respect any and all pre-exisiting interfaces, unless and until the admin/user asks for them to be changed. That means no touching of any interfaces it hasn't configured, including any interfaces that the user/admin might have configured in non-standard ways, including interactively. I have reproduced the above problem using "aptitude reinstall wicd-daemon", so it is definitely caused by installing the current version of wicd-daemon. I have been through basically the same problems with network-manager in the past. Issues like this are why so many people are hostile to that package. Thanks for your work on Debian. Andrew V. ======== For reference, in case these help. # cat /etc/network/interfaces # This file describes the network interfaces available on your system # and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5). # The loopback network interface auto lo iface lo inet loopback # The primary network interface allow-hotplug eth0 iface eth0 inet static address 192.168.1.40 netmask 255.255.255.0 network 192.168.1.0 broadcast 192.168.1.255 gateway 192.168.1.1 # dns-* options are implemented by the resolvconf package, if installed dns-nameservers 192.168.1.1 203.12.160.35 203.12.160.36 # ifconfig eth0: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 inet 192.168.1.55 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 192.168.1.255 inet6 fe80::a2b3:ccff:fee2:5ad3 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x20<link> ether a0:b3:cc:e2:5a:d3 txqueuelen 1000 (Ethernet) RX packets 342875 bytes 75660357 (72.1 MiB) RX errors 0 dropped 60907 overruns 0 frame 0 TX packets 302442 bytes 162293744 (154.7 MiB) TX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 carrier 0 collisions 0 device interrupt 18 lo: flags=73<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING> mtu 65536 inet 127.0.0.1 netmask 255.0.0.0 inet6 ::1 prefixlen 128 scopeid 0x10<host> loop txqueuelen 0 (Local Loopback) RX packets 31913079 bytes 22201337028 (20.6 GiB) RX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 frame 0 TX packets 31913079 bytes 22201337028 (20.6 GiB) TX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 carrier 0 collisions 0 # ls -al /etc/wicd/ total 40 drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 Feb 27 14:45 . drwxr-xr-x 171 root root 12288 Feb 27 14:45 .. -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 927 Nov 4 2014 dhclient.conf.template -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 931 Dec 22 2014 dhclient.conf.template.default drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Nov 4 2014 encryption -rw------- 1 root root 485 Feb 27 14:45 manager-settings.conf drwxr-xr-x 6 root root 4096 Nov 4 2014 scripts -rw------- 1 root root 320 Feb 27 14:45 wired-settings.conf -rw------- 1 root root 0 Feb 27 14:45 wireless-settings.conf # cat /etc/wicd/wired-settings.conf [wired-default] ip = None broadcast = None netmask = None gateway = None search_domain = None dns_domain = None dns1 = None dns2 = None dns3 = None beforescript = None afterscript = None predisconnectscript = None postdisconnectscript = None encryption_enabled = None default = True dhcphostname = <redacted> lastused = True # cat /etc/wicd/manager-settings.conf [Settings] backend = external wireless_interface = None wired_interface = eth0 wpa_driver = wext always_show_wired_interface = False use_global_dns = False global_dns_1 = None global_dns_2 = None global_dns_3 = None global_dns_dom = None global_search_dom = None auto_reconnect = True debug_mode = False wired_connect_mode = 1 signal_display_type = 0 should_verify_ap = 1 dhcp_client = 0 link_detect_tool = 0 flush_tool = 0 sudo_app = 0 prefer_wired = False show_never_connect = True -- System Information: Debian Release: stretch/sid APT prefers testing APT policy: (500, 'testing') Architecture: amd64 (x86_64) Kernel: Linux 4.3.0-1-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores) Locale: LANG=en_AU.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_AU.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8) Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system) Versions of packages wicd-daemon depends on: ii adduser 3.113+nmu3 ii dbus 1.10.6-1 ii debconf 1.5.58 ii ethtool 1:4.2-1 ii iproute2 4.3.0-1+b1 ii iputils-ping 3:20121221-5+b2 ii isc-dhcp-client 4.3.3-8 ii lsb-base 9.20160110 ii net-tools 1.60+git20150829.73cef8a-2 ii psmisc 22.21-2.1+b1 ii python-dbus 1.2.0-3 ii python-gobject 3.18.2-2 ii python-wicd 1.7.4+tb2-1 pn python:any <none> ii wireless-tools 30~pre9-8 ii wpasupplicant 2.3-2.3 Versions of packages wicd-daemon recommends: ii rfkill 0.5-1 ii wicd-gtk [wicd-client] 1.7.4+tb2-1 Versions of packages wicd-daemon suggests: ii pm-utils 1.4.1-16 Versions of packages wicd depends on: ii wicd-gtk [wicd-client] 1.7.4+tb2-1 Versions of packages wicd-gtk depends on: ii python-glade2 2.24.0-4 ii python-gtk2 2.24.0-4 pn python:any <none> Versions of packages wicd-gtk recommends: ii gksu 2.0.2-9 ii python-notify 0.1.1-4 Versions of packages python-wicd depends on: pn python:any <none> -- debconf information: * wicd/users: