Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: [RFC] Defaulting desktop profiles to net-nds/openldap[minimal]
Duncan schrieb: However, hasn't it always been gentoo policy to *STRONGLY* encourage users to run emerge --pretend/--ask and EXAMINE THE RESULTS for anything unexpected, and resolve it in one way or another to expected, before going ahead? Thus, anyone suddenly losing their openldap server as a result of a simple uncaught USE flag change, gets to keep the pieces, as the saying commonly goes. Gentoo has /always/ been about reasonable documentation but has /never/ been about handholding. We've never been afraid to point users who expect to be handheld or babysat to other distributions that are a more appropriate match to their expectations. In the days before we started playing fast and loose with profiles, this change would have been confined to an under development profile, and users would need to explicitly switch to that. After some time, the old profile would become unsupported and users told to use the new profile. But today that practice is typically not considered for profile changes any more. Best regards, Chí-Thanh Christopher Nguyễn
Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: [RFC] Defaulting desktop profiles to net-nds/openldap[minimal]
On 12/02/2012 04:40 AM, Duncan wrote: As others have mentioned, equery u[ses] openldap . Does nothing in this case. Actually, I have a bug open at this very moment about a new ambiguous USE flag, USE=fma, in the new sci-libs/fftw-3.3.3 ebuild. My bdver1 has fma4, but not fma3. Does it apply? I checked the flag description, no help. I checked the ebuild, it just use_enables fma. On the bug, I've actually tested and found it works for my fma4 hardware, and I've posted on the amd64 list asking someone with fma3 (probably an amd trinity apu machine, at this point) to test it as well. https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=445053 Hopefully we'll get a description that unambiguously states that it works for both fma3 and fma4 out of that bug; either that or the flag will change to presumably fma4, if it only works for fma4 (which I've tested) and not fma3. Now obviously I don't expect most users to go to /that/ level. I'd expect most users to simply leave the flag disabled if they're unsure. But I WOULD expect most users to SEE the new flag, and investigate at least far enough to see that they can simply leave it off if they don't know whether their system has fma or not. The result might be a bit slower, but it'll work, whereas if they don't have the hardware and turn it on, things might not work. I think you have Stockholm syndrome. I've updated thousands of packages this month. I cannot do this for each one, and even if I could, there's a huge (unnecessary) opportunity cost to doing so. At the very least, my company has to pay my salary. If I were to spend a week reading the ebuilds for every update I do, that would also waste thousands of dollars of their money. I don't buy the false dichotomy that I should leave Gentoo rather than trust things not to break without warning. Gentoo isn't for everyone, nor can it be and still be what we know as gentoo. This is really what I have a problem with, the openldap issue aside. There seems to be a vocal minority of hipsters who want Gentoo to remain hard so that they can use it ironically. The silent majority just want as many things to work as possible with as little effort as possible. This attitude not only gives Gentoo a bad reputation (see, for example, any distro thread on r/linux), but makes it hard to retain new users and contributors. Whenever something stupid breaks for no reason, there's always someone there to say maybe Gentoo isn't for you. And some of those people leave. There isn't anything inherently difficult about Gentoo. Bad decisions by humans are what can make it hard to use[1], not anything fundamental to its nature. And the Gentoo that you know and love isn't going soft if it warns people that their LDAP servers might go away. [1] Please, no one take this as criticism. Things are in general wonderful.
Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: [RFC] Defaulting desktop profiles to net-nds/openldap[minimal]
On 02/12/2012 08:02, Michael Orlitzky wrote: I think you have Stockholm syndrome. I've updated thousands of packages this month. I cannot do this for each one, and even if I could, there's a huge (unnecessary) opportunity cost to doing so. Sorry but there is no way you could have updated thousands of packages _in stable_ at least not for a single system, this month (and I take it as November, rather than December). I have four differently-configured servers in front of me, and none had more than 51 packages installed on it during the course of November — and this is with quite a few packages being updated more often (Icinga and Munin) because I've been working on them. As I said in the other messages, I agree that we can do better – and going with USE=server to me looks like going better – but I don't buy the strawmen arguments that we have to cover for the totally unskilled sysadmin that thinks he can run Gentoo in production and can't even see what the updates are. So please drop it. -- Diego Elio Pettenò — Flameeyes flamee...@flameeyes.eu — http://blog.flameeyes.eu/
Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: [RFC] Defaulting desktop profiles to net-nds/openldap[minimal]
On 12/02/2012 11:19 AM, Diego Elio Pettenò wrote: On 02/12/2012 08:02, Michael Orlitzky wrote: I think you have Stockholm syndrome. I've updated thousands of packages this month. I cannot do this for each one, and even if I could, there's a huge (unnecessary) opportunity cost to doing so. Sorry but there is no way you could have updated thousands of packages _in stable_ at least not for a single system, this month (and I take it as November, rather than December). If this was a single system, I wouldn't be wasting your time. I have four differently-configured servers in front of me, and none had more than 51 packages installed on it during the course of November — and this is with quite a few packages being updated more often (Icinga and Munin) because I've been working on them. As I said in the other messages, I agree that we can do better – and going with USE=server to me looks like going better – but I don't buy the strawmen arguments that we have to cover for the totally unskilled sysadmin that thinks he can run Gentoo in production and can't even see what the updates are. So please drop it. The USE=server solution is fine with me; the whole openldap thing was really tangential to the point I was trying to make. And for some reason it's not as fun to argue in the morning as it is at 2am, so thanks for working on it, it's dropped =)
Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: [RFC] Defaulting desktop profiles to net-nds/openldap[minimal]
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA256 On 01/12/12 11:50 PM, Michael Orlitzky wrote: $ cat /usr/portage/net-nds/openldap/metadata.xml euse -i 'minimal' |grep openldap :) -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v2.0.19 (GNU/Linux) iF4EAREIAAYFAlC7pq8ACgkQ2ugaI38ACPBMywEAqLFdn5zjXxOBWe6ylTnXwLCh rEVEZ0d9SM8MZYCM75cBAK1CQ/e8lQbnBtNEfPMxvd/FuaNeTK3QI00Db7vQm+Kw =4dSZ -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: [RFC] Defaulting desktop profiles to net-nds/openldap[minimal]
Alec Warner wrote: Testing all the updates is basically not possible. Understanding the updates is basically not possible. I think it's very possible to understand updates which are important for the system. Of course it is a lot of work if it is to be done every day. I would not update systems every day. manage your services appropriately Absolutely. No distribution can compensate for lacking process. The .se registry published a .se.se zone once, and got cake. Michael Orlitzky wrote: At the very least, my company has to pay my salary. If I were to spend a week reading the ebuilds for every update I do, that would also waste thousands of dollars of their money. Part of the job is IMO to know which packages are important and to look at those carefully. That's not a waste of money, that's what they pay you to do, if your job is to keep things running. There seems to be a vocal minority of hipsters who want Gentoo to remain hard so that they can use it ironically. Am I a hipster? That would be funny. Thanks for the trolling. It is important for me that Gentoo remains powerful. This means that Gentoo will by definition be more complex, or more difficult, or harder, than other distributions which are less powerful, because the power means needing to know more about what Gentoo is taking care of. There isn't anything inherently difficult about Gentoo. I disagree completely. Being source based indeed makes Gentoo inherently difficult for everyone who is not experienced with using package sources. Gentoo adds the amazing USE flags value to help with this, but there are countless administrators who are simply not comfortable and efficient with Gentoo. That is fine. In order to not make a mess of their systems they would need to learn new things (or they would already be comfortable and efficient) and if they can not or do not want to do that then Gentoo isn't a very good tool for them. And the Gentoo that you know and love isn't going soft if it warns people that their LDAP servers might go away. I think a USE change does that really well. //Peter
Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: [RFC] Defaulting desktop profiles to net-nds/openldap[minimal]
El dom, 02-12-2012 a las 11:54 -0500, Michael Orlitzky escribió: [...] The USE=server solution is fine with me; the whole openldap thing was really tangential to the point I was trying to make. And for some reason it's not as fun to argue in the morning as it is at 2am, so thanks for working on it, it's dropped =) Didn't see 'server solution' before, that also looks fine to me ;) signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: [RFC] Defaulting desktop profiles to net-nds/openldap[minimal]
Lots of people wrote: Various good points. Keep in mind that Gentoo users, even sysadmins, aren't expected to read -dev. That means that when things like profile changes happen they have no idea why, or what the impact will be. That's why we have news. It seems like we put out all of about 3 news messages a year, so the average sysadmin is hardly barraged by them (unlike often-redundant elog messages). There is no harm in sending out the odd message. If our news becomes bothersome I'm sure we'll hear about it, but many users come to Gentoo because of our documentation, not because they like surprises. Sure, no need to handhold, but educated articles for educated readers is just good user relations. All that said, I'd really encourage any Gentoo user to at least follow planet. There is little that is posted there that a Gentoo user wouldn't find interesting, and often it works out as a decent substitute for news. Rich
Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: [RFC] Defaulting desktop profiles to net-nds/openldap[minimal]
On 12/01/2012 09:48 PM, Duncan wrote: Chí-Thanh Christopher Nguyễn posted on Sun, 02 Dec 2012 01:28:26 +0100 as excerpted: If this change is applied anyway, I suggest to at least produce a news item in order to not surprise users about the sudden loss of their openldap server. I wouldn't object to a news item. More information is good. mode=rant However, hasn't it always been gentoo policy to *STRONGLY* encourage users to run emerge --pretend/--ask and EXAMINE THE RESULTS for anything unexpected, and resolve it in one way or another to expected, before going ahead? Thus, anyone suddenly losing their openldap server as a result of a simple uncaught USE flag change, gets to keep the pieces, as the saying commonly goes. Gentoo has /always/ been about reasonable documentation but has /never/ been about handholding. We've never been afraid to point users who expect to be handheld or babysat to other distributions that are a more appropriate match to their expectations. We should! This is just an excuse for shitty QA. These things have real consequences for real people. So yes, a news item is reasonable as it's arguably part of that good documentation. But in general, there's something wrong if we're unduly worrying about loss of functionality involving a USE flag change, or even a simple USE flag default change, because equally as arguably, anyone not catching such things with the --pretend/--ask they do BEFORE letting things just run, and/or not following up accordingly, really should be thinking about a distribution other than gentoo in the first place. That's a fact that's not really practical to change at this point, both because we haven't the manpower to do all the required handholding, and because it would make gentoo into something it's not, and something it was never intended to be. Paraphrasing Star Trek's Bones, that would be Gentoo, Jim, but not as we know it. /mode I beat my wife, is it her fault she gets beaten for choosing to be with me? Don't blame the victim. Handholding != making an effort not to screw up people's systems. Even with emerge --pretend, all I'm going to see is that the minimal flag switched from off to on by default. Which I'll interpret as meaning, the minimal flag was changed so that openldap[minimal] today means what openldap[-minimal] did yesterday. Someone's going to reboot three months after this change and their whole office is going to be down while they try to figure out why they don't have an LDAP server. For even a small business, that could mean thousands of dollars. Ha ha, you shouldn't have trusted me! is not the appropriate response.
Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: [RFC] Defaulting desktop profiles to net-nds/openldap[minimal]
On 01/12/2012 19:44, Michael Orlitzky wrote: Someone's going to reboot three months after this change and their whole office is going to be down while they try to figure out why they don't have an LDAP server. For even a small business, that could mean thousands of dollars. Ha ha, you shouldn't have trusted me! is not the appropriate response. Erm, it might not be an appropriate response but ... to not check what is going on is not an appropriate way to conduct a business anyway. Especially not if you use a desktop profile on an LDAP server in production ... Seriously, if that's a scenario that you find yourself into often .. you should consider changing habits.. drastically. -- Diego Elio Pettenò — Flameeyes flamee...@flameeyes.eu — http://blog.flameeyes.eu/
Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: [RFC] Defaulting desktop profiles to net-nds/openldap[minimal]
On 12/01/2012 10:50 PM, Diego Elio Pettenò wrote: On 01/12/2012 19:44, Michael Orlitzky wrote: Someone's going to reboot three months after this change and their whole office is going to be down while they try to figure out why they don't have an LDAP server. For even a small business, that could mean thousands of dollars. Ha ha, you shouldn't have trusted me! is not the appropriate response. Erm, it might not be an appropriate response but ... to not check what is going on is not an appropriate way to conduct a business anyway. The only way to know what's going on is to read the ebuild. And nobody has the time to do that for every default USE flag change, especially when you're managing multiple machines. In this case, USE=-minimal is really USE=make_it_work_at_all, for anyone who installs openldap on purpose. Especially not if you use a desktop profile on an LDAP server in production ... Maybe his boss isn't good with the terminal, and makes him install GNOME on the servers? Who knows. The profile name is just an arbitrary string associated with a set of defaults. People do weird things. This is not in itself proof that the admin is an idiot deserving of punishment. Seriously, if that's a scenario that you find yourself into often .. you should consider changing habits.. drastically. It's fun to condescend from time to time, but you shouldn't use yourself as the bar against which you measure everyone else. Up to a rounding error, everyone using Gentoo knows less about it than you do. They should be able to keep a system running, too. Anyway, I'm fine with the change as long as there's a news item. I just get annoyed with the don't use Gentoo unless you like your stuff broken attitude.
Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: [RFC] Defaulting desktop profiles to net-nds/openldap[minimal]
On 01/12/2012 20:09, Michael Orlitzky wrote: The only way to know what's going on is to read the ebuild. And nobody has the time to do that for every default USE flag change, especially when you're managing multiple machines. In this case, USE=-minimal is really USE=make_it_work_at_all, for anyone who installs openldap on purpose. Not really. Have you ever managed a network of multiple servers and clients? It's extremely common to have USE=minimal on clients, and not on servers, as that's what (most of the time) USE=minimal refers to. Maybe his boss isn't good with the terminal, and makes him install GNOME on the servers? Who knows. The profile name is just an arbitrary string associated with a set of defaults. People do weird things. This is not in itself proof that the admin is an idiot deserving of punishment. The profile name is not just an arbitrary string — it's a description. If you don't read and understand a description as easy as desktop, I reserve the right to think you're an idiot. You can reserve the right of thinking whatever you want about me, but my opinion still stands. I've had GNOME, or KDE, in many systems before that I wouldn't count as desktops — you know how I handled them? Not going through the desktop profile. Seriously. Anyway, I'm fine with the change as long as there's a news item. I just get annoyed with the don't use Gentoo unless you like your stuff broken attitude. Guess what? I run Gentoo system in production and I also don't want them to be broken. On the other hand I _do_ pay attention on what's going on, especially because unless you install everything and the kitchen sink, the updates on a weekly basis, for stable, are not that major. Sure, sometimes I have to look up what an USE flag does (and no, most of the time I don't have to read the ebuild, we have descriptions in metadata.xml for a reason!), but most of the time everything is extremely easy to set up, and I don't usually get overthrown by defaults' changes. Among others because for stuff I _really_ care about, I don't rely on defaults but I set my flags explicitly (so yes I have a bunch of packages that have -minimal in the package.use file). And I'm not even arguing against adding a news item, it's fine by me either way, but I don't like hearing lame excuses on either side. The fact that something is not entirely clear is a good reason enough, without having to come up with a sysadmin that is not understanding the tools as an example. If anything, what you just say would call for making openldap follow the 39 packages already out there using IUSE=+server, so that there is no doubt that changing the default on desktop profile from USE=-minimal to USE=-server means that _you're losing your server_. Robin, how would you feel about that? It would also solve the issue of USE=cxx depending on USE=!minimal right now (for not really any good reason). -- Diego Elio Pettenò — Flameeyes flamee...@flameeyes.eu — http://blog.flameeyes.eu/
Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: [RFC] Defaulting desktop profiles to net-nds/openldap[minimal]
On 12/1/2012 22:21, Diego Elio Pettenò wrote: If anything, what you just say would call for making openldap follow the 39 packages already out there using IUSE=+server, so that there is no doubt that changing the default on desktop profile from USE=-minimal to USE=-server means that _you're losing your server_. As a user and a sysadmin, I can say that I have had enough bad experiences with ebuilds using the minimal USE flag that I typically try to avoid it. There are so many different packages that have that flag, and in most of them, having it set usually ends up removing something I didn't expect. Personally, I would prefer to see the introduction of a server flag. That way, when I do updates, I know exactly what's going to change. I also think the news item is a good idea. I know I don't always do a perfectly thorough job of it, but I do --pretend and go through the list before a world updates. Sometimes, though, I don't quite understand the USE changes. Especially with global flags like minimal or gtk, doing `equery uses package` isn't much help because the description is so generic. A news item would help reduce that confusion somewhat, especially if combined with the flag name change. Just my $ 0.02 -- ♫Dustin
Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: [RFC] Defaulting desktop profiles to net-nds/openldap[minimal]
On 12/01/2012 11:21 PM, Diego Elio Pettenò wrote: On 01/12/2012 20:09, Michael Orlitzky wrote: The only way to know what's going on is to read the ebuild. And nobody has the time to do that for every default USE flag change, especially when you're managing multiple machines. In this case, USE=-minimal is really USE=make_it_work_at_all, for anyone who installs openldap on purpose. Not really. Have you ever managed a network of multiple servers and clients? It's extremely common to have USE=minimal on clients, and not on servers, as that's what (most of the time) USE=minimal refers to. I have, and I have no idea what USE=minimal usually refers to, because it differs wildly from package to package. I suspect most people know even less than I do. Maybe his boss isn't good with the terminal, and makes him install GNOME on the servers? Who knows. The profile name is just an arbitrary string associated with a set of defaults. People do weird things. This is not in itself proof that the admin is an idiot deserving of punishment. The profile name is not just an arbitrary string — it's a description. If you don't read and understand a description as easy as desktop, I reserve the right to think you're an idiot. You can reserve the right of thinking whatever you want about me, but my opinion still stands. I've had GNOME, or KDE, in many systems before that I wouldn't count as desktops — you know how I handled them? Not going through the desktop profile. Seriously. Everyone on this list knows this, I suppose. But it's unrealistic to suppose that everyone does. Anyway, I'm fine with the change as long as there's a news item. I just get annoyed with the don't use Gentoo unless you like your stuff broken attitude. Guess what? I run Gentoo system in production and I also don't want them to be broken. On the other hand I _do_ pay attention on what's going on, especially because unless you install everything and the kitchen sink, the updates on a weekly basis, for stable, are not that major. Sure, sometimes I have to look up what an USE flag does (and no, most of the time I don't have to read the ebuild, we have descriptions in metadata.xml for a reason!), but most of the time everything is extremely easy to set up, and I don't usually get overthrown by defaults' changes. Among others because for stuff I _really_ care about, I don't rely on defaults but I set my flags explicitly (so yes I have a bunch of packages that have -minimal in the package.use file). $ cat /usr/portage/net-nds/openldap/metadata.xml And most people don't even know that metadata.xml exists. In my previous message, I said, but you shouldn't use yourself as the bar against which you measure everyone else. You've countered with a list of things that you personally know and do, and therefore (as they've become commonplace to you) expect everyone else to know and do.
Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: [RFC] Defaulting desktop profiles to net-nds/openldap[minimal]
On 01/12/2012 20:50, Michael Orlitzky wrote: And most people don't even know that metadata.xml exists. But I do expect them to know `equery uses` like Dustin said. The fact that some flags are not clearly described in metadata.xml is another problem. In my previous message, I said, but you shouldn't use yourself as the bar against which you measure everyone else. You've countered with a list of things that you personally know and do, and therefore (as they've become commonplace to you) expect everyone else to know and do. It should be one of the first things you learn about Gentoo. And it doesn't really seem to be something that is irresponsible to ask from people. Again, I'm not disagreeing with having a news item, and especially not against replacing IUSE=minimal with something more explicit, but I do disagree with the concept that we should triple-check each bullet to make sure it's blank, because people point them at their groin and shoot. -- Diego Elio Pettenò — Flameeyes flamee...@flameeyes.eu — http://blog.flameeyes.eu/
Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: [RFC] Defaulting desktop profiles to net-nds/openldap[minimal]
Michael Orlitzky wrote: I just get annoyed with the don't use Gentoo unless you like your stuff broken attitude. Don't confuse stuff changing with stuff breaking - they are very different things. In Gentoo stuff changes every single day. I heard that gentoo-x86 gets some number of commits per hour, or was it per minute.. Stuff generally doesn't change for changes sake, but because the change is an overall improvement to Gentoo. Gentoo being source based is also a big part of why there are so many and frequent changes. This means that anyone who wants to use Gentoo and have a system which reliably does what they want it to do *need to pay attention*. They need to pay attention to what happens upstream, and they need to pay attention to what happens in Gentoo. Not by monitoring every mailing list, but by monitoring what portage will do when they use it, and by being sure that this is what they desire. USE flags are a huge part of this. Guessing at what any USE flag means is no good, so yes, sometimes it is needed to actually look at the ebuild to learn what will happen. Personally I find ebuilds to be amazing as documentation, because they are also the actual code. I've built some Gentoo systems tailored to specific needs which work great but which are not getting updated, because the sysadmins who take care of those systems since they were deployed aren't comfortable and efficient with Gentoo. That's fine - Gentoo is clearly not a system for everyone. But it *is* a fantastic system for those who are aware that a finely tuned machine requires good care, and who are able and willing to take such care, by being active in creation of their systems. It is fantastic because it is so easy for Gentoo to change for the better, which happens constantly. I think USE=-server is a great way to change the ebuild for the better. I don't care at all about a news item. They are generally only annoying me. :) //Peter
Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: [RFC] Defaulting desktop profiles to net-nds/openldap[minimal]
Peter Stuge wrote: Michael Orlitzky wrote: I just get annoyed with the don't use Gentoo unless you like your stuff broken attitude. Don't confuse stuff changing with stuff breaking - they are very different things. In Gentoo stuff changes every single day. I heard that gentoo-x86 gets some number of commits per hour, or was it per minute.. Stuff generally doesn't change for changes sake, but because the change is an overall improvement to Gentoo. Gentoo being source based is also a big part of why there are so many and frequent changes. This means that anyone who wants to use Gentoo and have a system which reliably does what they want it to do *need to pay attention*. They need to pay attention to what happens upstream, and they need to pay attention to what happens in Gentoo. Not by monitoring every mailing list, but by monitoring what portage will do when they use it, and by being sure that this is what they desire. USE flags are a huge part of this. Guessing at what any USE flag means is no good, so yes, sometimes it is needed to actually look at the ebuild to learn what will happen. Personally I find ebuilds to be amazing as documentation, because they are also the actual code. I've built some Gentoo systems tailored to specific needs which work great but which are not getting updated, because the sysadmins who take care of those systems since they were deployed aren't comfortable and efficient with Gentoo. That's fine - Gentoo is clearly not a system for everyone. But it *is* a fantastic system for those who are aware that a finely tuned machine requires good care, and who are able and willing to take such care, by being active in creation of their systems. It is fantastic because it is so easy for Gentoo to change for the better, which happens constantly. I think USE=-server is a great way to change the ebuild for the better. I don't care at all about a news item. They are generally only annoying me. :) //Peter +1 As a regular desktop user, I know to look before updating. If I don't understand something, I search the mailing list in the past week or so in case someone else has run into the issue, I search the forums but most importantly, I also read this mailing list. Generally changes are talked about here first. The others are my backups. If none of those answers my question, I don't update until I get a answer. If needed, I ask on the -user mailing list what something is for or what something means. Basically, it is up to me to educate myself about changes. It has always been like this, when you update, do -p or -a first. If you blindly update, you get to fix it because it is your own fault for the breakage. Zac, he has done one heck of a job with portage giving us information. We can see USE flag changes and everything else BEFORE emerge does anything. If a person doesn't do that, they are going to cause themselves trouble and they should only complain to themselves. Gentoo has never been a distro to hold a persons hand. If a person needs their hands held, they should have chosen another distro. Gentoo is not a hand holding distro. It's just a distro that has great docs for people to learn first, then update. This has been a users perspective. Back to my hole. ;-) Dale :-) :-) -- I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words!
Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: [RFC] Defaulting desktop profiles to net-nds/openldap[minimal]
Michael Orlitzky wrote: On 12/01/2012 09:48 PM, Duncan wrote: Chí-Thanh Christopher Nguyễn posted on Sun, 02 Dec 2012 01:28:26 +0100 as excerpted: If this change is applied anyway, I suggest to at least produce a news item in order to not surprise users about the sudden loss of their openldap server. I wouldn't object to a news item. More information is good. mode=rant However, hasn't it always been gentoo policy to *STRONGLY* encourage users to run emerge --pretend/--ask and EXAMINE THE RESULTS for anything unexpected, and resolve it in one way or another to expected, before going ahead? Thus, anyone suddenly losing their openldap server as a result of a simple uncaught USE flag change, gets to keep the pieces, as the saying commonly goes. Gentoo has /always/ been about reasonable documentation but has /never/ been about handholding. We've never been afraid to point users who expect to be handheld or babysat to other distributions that are a more appropriate match to their expectations. We should! This is just an excuse for shitty QA. These things have real consequences for real people. Normal user posting ahead: I don't see it as a QA problem. I see it as the person sitting in the chair not knowing what they are doing. Gentoo has never been a 'hand holding' distro. The info is given before the update, it is up to the person in the chair to notice the changes and adjust IF needed. So yes, a news item is reasonable as it's arguably part of that good documentation. But in general, there's something wrong if we're unduly worrying about loss of functionality involving a USE flag change, or even a simple USE flag default change, because equally as arguably, anyone not catching such things with the --pretend/--ask they do BEFORE letting things just run, and/or not following up accordingly, really should be thinking about a distribution other than gentoo in the first place. That's a fact that's not really practical to change at this point, both because we haven't the manpower to do all the required handholding, and because it would make gentoo into something it's not, and something it was never intended to be. Paraphrasing Star Trek's Bones, that would be Gentoo, Jim, but not as we know it. /mode I beat my wife, is it her fault she gets beaten for choosing to be with me? Don't blame the victim. If she chooses to stay with you, then she lives with that choice. She may be the victim but she chose to stay and that is her decision. Maybe she likes it that way. Who knows. Handholding != making an effort not to screw up people's systems. Even with emerge --pretend, all I'm going to see is that the minimal flag switched from off to on by default. Which I'll interpret as meaning, the minimal flag was changed so that openldap[minimal] today means what openldap[-minimal] did yesterday. Someone's going to reboot three months after this change and their whole office is going to be down while they try to figure out why they don't have an LDAP server. For even a small business, that could mean thousands of dollars. Ha ha, you shouldn't have trusted me! is not the appropriate response. If you see the flag changing, best find out what that change is about BEFORE you update. I do this every time I update. I check USE flag changes, upgrade/downgrade and anything else Zac has done to help me see what is coming. A news item is fine to give additional notice but it is still up to the person in the chair. As a user, I don't expect Gentoo to hold my hand like I am a 3 year old crossing the road. If a person needs that hand holding, maybe Gentoo is not for them. There are plenty of distros that hold your hand while you cross the road. Dale :-) :-) -- I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words!
Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: [RFC] Defaulting desktop profiles to net-nds/openldap[minimal]
On Sat, Dec 1, 2012 at 9:27 PM, Peter Stuge pe...@stuge.se wrote: Michael Orlitzky wrote: I just get annoyed with the don't use Gentoo unless you like your stuff broken attitude. Don't confuse stuff changing with stuff breaking - they are very different things. In Gentoo stuff changes every single day. I heard that gentoo-x86 gets some number of commits per hour, or was it per minute.. Stuff generally doesn't change for changes sake, but because the change is an overall improvement to Gentoo. Gentoo being source based is also a big part of why there are so many and frequent changes. This means that anyone who wants to use Gentoo and have a system which reliably does what they want it to do *need to pay attention*. Anyone running any distro (that receives updates) needs to pay attention. I manage thousands of Ubuntu machines (desktops, servers, laptops, including ldap servers.) Screwups will happen. At one point, Ubuntu pushed a pam package that broke ABI and caused cron to not work. Cron broke..on thousands of my machines. At one point, Ubuntu shipped a sendmail package that would cause data loss in some edge cases that we happened to trigger, and a bunch of emails were accidentally deleted. At one point, Ubuntu shipped an nfs-utils package that would cause your machine to hang if you had kerberos in your PAM stack, locked your screen, and had a sec=krb5 NFS mounted homedirectory. The solution was to ssh into the machine and kill the screensaver process, or run kinit. This is in the Ubuntu LTS, which once released, doesn't receive updates that often (one per day perhaps..) We certainly don't review them, as most of the are fine. Gentoo receives updates at a much more rapid rate. Testing all the updates is basically not possible. Understanding the updates is basically not possible. The proper way to have a 'rock solid' LDAP system is to realize the above, that we live in an imperfect system, and manage your services appropriately. As a sysadmin, that means you schedule a maintenance window for your openLDAP stuff; so your users know it might be down, and why. That means you build binpkgs, so you can easily revert if something goes wrong. That means you have a test server. That means you have two production servers, behind anycast, or a loadbalancer; you take the first one down, do the upgrade, test, and then restore to production, then do the second server. If the first server fails testing, you still have the working server to tide you over. They need to pay attention to what happens upstream, and they need to pay attention to what happens in Gentoo. Not by monitoring every mailing list, but by monitoring what portage will do when they use it, and by being sure that this is what they desire. USE flags are a huge part of this. Guessing at what any USE flag means is no good, so yes, sometimes it is needed to actually look at the ebuild to learn what will happen. Personally I find ebuilds to be amazing as documentation, because they are also the actual code. I've built some Gentoo systems tailored to specific needs which work great but which are not getting updated, because the sysadmins who take care of those systems since they were deployed aren't comfortable and efficient with Gentoo. That's fine - Gentoo is clearly not a system for everyone. But it *is* a fantastic system for those who are aware that a finely tuned machine requires good care, and who are able and willing to take such care, by being active in creation of their systems. It is fantastic because it is so easy for Gentoo to change for the better, which happens constantly. I think USE=-server is a great way to change the ebuild for the better. I don't care at all about a news item. They are generally only annoying me. :) //Peter
