Fedora, up2date, and bugs.

[Penelope Fudd]

Hi!

I use Fedora 2 and Up2date.

Today, Up2date told me a new version of pppd is available.  Great!  I told
it to get it.  It did, but as it tried to install it, it coughed and
died, telling me that initscripts-<whatever> required pppd <
2.3.whatever, unresolvable circular dependency, won't go any further.

Points:

1. I thought up2date took care of circular dependencies.

2. I thought the folks putting updates into the up2date queue would
have tried downloading themselves pppd before letting the world try.

Meta-points:

1. I don't see an easy way to report bugs in the up2date system.

2. Bugzilla is nice, but it's too big.  Fedora has only been around a
little while, and searching for Fedora bugs in Bugzilla is an exercise
in banging one's head against one's wall.

3. Up2date has a problem with its mirrors not all being up to date;
sometimes the taskbar icon says I need to update, but up2date says no.

4. Isn't up2date the equivalent of a DOS attack on the up2date servers?

Meta-solutions (solutions don't correspond to points):

1. Copy Bugzilla to a second server, but leave the database behind.  Call
it the Fedora Bugzilla or something.

2. Bugs exist in rpms, and are fixed by swapping in newer (bug-free)
rpms.  This is what up2date is doing.  The bug tracking system should
match this model and have rpm names+version numbers as primary keys.
This is not yet being done.

3. Put a help and/or bugzilla button in Up2date.

4. Write a script to get a recursive directory listing of all the
mirrors.  Remove mirrors from dns until they're up to date and the
master control files have the right md5sums.

5. Have a DNS entry that announces what version the latest up2date rpm list is:

  % dig latest-rpmlist.fedora.redhat.com txt

  ;; ANSWER SECTION:
  latest-rpmlist.fedora.redhat.com 86400 IN TXT "Last update 2004-07-01, this message updated 2004-07-09, mac: 0401f384"

(Because DNS is distributed, cached, scales well, has been tested, and is already in place)

Solutions:

1. Release a new version of initscripts with updated requirements
which will undo the current pppd-initscripts conflict I am (and
soon presumably *everyone else* will be) having.

Thanks!
-- 
Penelope Fudd <kernel at pkts.ca>