[csw-maintainers] Bugreport on alternatives with NFS-shared /opt/csw

[Dagobert Michelsen]

Hi Phil,

Am 22.03.2010 um 21:35 schrieb Philip Brown:
> On Mon, Mar 22, 2010 at 1:10 PM, Dagobert Michelsen  
> <dam at opencsw.org> wrote:
>> Am 22.03.2010 um 19:40 schrieb Philip Brown:
>>> I will repeat my question/request, that before people can make
>>> suggestiions for solutions, they first need to be better informed on
>>> exactly what our "alternatives" system does in /etc/opt.
>>
>>
>> Alternatives makes a link from the thing to choose to
>> /etc/opt/csw/alternatives/<pkg>.
>> There is another link to the final file which is automacially  
>> handled by
>> alternatives.
>
> HHMMM... this is surprising to me. If I am reading this correctly, it
> seems like you are saying something like;
>
> ls -l /opt/csw/bin/alternative-switched-prog     ->
>    /etc/opt/csw/alternatives/[PKG]/alternative-switch-prog
>
> ls -l /etc/opt/csw/alternatives/[PKG]/alternative-switch-prog  ->
>        /opt/csw/bin/real-location-prog

Yes.

> I am surprised because I thought it would be more like
>
> ls -l /opt/csw/bin/alternative-switched-prog     ->
>       real-location-prog

If you do this manually it is the indication for alternatives that
it shouldn't interfere. That's why it does this differently.

>
> /etc/opt/csw/alternatives/[PKG]/alternative-switch-prog
>     [is a file, describing "preferred" destination of symlink]

Nope, that is at /opt/csw/share/alternatives/<pkg> and is only used
in the CAS.

>> The idea would be to have a cas script that reads the csw.conf if it
>> is NFS shared or not and when in NFS-share-mode it makes one static  
>> link
>> without
>> alternatives. I could add this to the existing alternatives CAS.  
>> Comments?
>
> that may be one way to do it. However, It "feels" to me, to be better
> to be more consistent about the user-touching implementation.
> By that I mean, it might be nice if possible to consistently have the
> symlink be 'directly' to the target, whether NFS shared or otherwise.

Alternatives just doesn't work this way and I don't have time to
modify the behaviour correctly in the code.

> That has the additional benefit that you do not have to do any
> "special configuration" if you want to do mixed modes.
> That is to say, you could have a completely locally installed,
> "regular" CSW package installation on one machine, and then use
>
> rsync -a /opt/csw/.   nfs-master:/opt/csw
>  (or to any other machine, maybe just a "client" instead of nfs  
> server!)
>
> and have it "work right" after copying.

This sucks as it is in direct opposition to sparse zones. We get
in so much trouble with this that I am constantly asking myself
if it is worth it.


Best regards

   -- Dago