Package: nis Version: 3.17-18 Severity: normal
As it stands, on a first install of nis, postinst is running /etc/init.d/nis start (or invoke-rc.d nis start) before there is anything at all useful in /etc/yp.conf; this leaves me waiting for a pointless attempt to bind when no server is set. Even if I edit the yp.conf, it's too late to help, by the time I see that slowly failing "binding ..." message that reminds me that I need to hold this package's hand because it doesn't think to ask me for information it absolutely must have before its init.d/ script can succeed. One fix for this would be for the script (either postinst or init.d/) to notice if the yp.conf is unconfigured and not attempt to start the service in that case, e.g. producing a message about the need to put something sensible in yp.conf, like (for postinst): if sed -e 's/#.*//' /etc/yp.conf 2>/dev/null | grep . >/dev/null then /etc/init.d/nis start else echo "Please configure /etc/yp.conf and run /etc/init.d/nis start" >&2 fi However, the package installs /etc/yp.conf if there wasn't one there previously: when it's installing it, and there was nothing there before, asking the user for their nis server's IP address (and remarking that the numeric address really is needed, but that <cmd> host nis </cmd> might get useful results) would enable the package to install an actually *useful* yp.conf in the first instance, *in time* for its init.d/ script to usefully start NIS services. Any time after the first install, leaving yp.conf alone is of course perfectly sensible, although a really clever (i.e. harder to maintain) system would read it, work out whether it's set ypserver, check that this is actually reachable; if unset or unreachable, ask for a server setting and modify yp.conf - but, as you say, that's a lot of extra effort; and it's almost never needed *after the first time* ... -- Package-specific info: nm-tool is not installed -- System Information: Debian Release: squeeze/sid APT prefers testing APT policy: (500, 'testing'), (500, 'stable') Architecture: i386 (i686) Kernel: Linux 2.6.26-1-686 (SMP w/2 CPU cores) Locale: LANG=en_GB.ISO-8859-15, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.ISO-8859-15 (charmap=ISO-8859-15) Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash Versions of packages nis depends on: ii debconf [debconf-2.0] 1.5.26 Debian configuration management sy ii libc6 2.9-4 GNU C Library: Shared libraries ii libdbus-1-3 1.2.12-1 simple interprocess messaging syst ii libdbus-glib-1-2 0.80-3 simple interprocess messaging syst ii libgdbm3 1.8.3-4 GNU dbm database routines (runtime ii libglib2.0-0 2.20.0-2 The GLib library of C routines ii libslp1 1.2.1-7.5 OpenSLP libraries ii lsb-base 3.2-22 Linux Standard Base 3.2 init scrip ii make 3.81-5 The GNU version of the "make" util ii netbase 4.34 Basic TCP/IP networking system ii portmap 6.0-9 RPC port mapper nis recommends no packages. nis suggests no packages. -- debconf information: * nis/not-yet-configured: * nis/domain: opera -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
