missing scripts, no documentation

[paul chubb]

In an extensive search I only found documentation for red hat/fedora versions of linux. The documentation by the maintainers of the software is also red hat specific. It uses a series of scripts eg setup-ds.pl to configure the software that are not installed when the ubuntu packages: dogtag-pki and 389-ds-base are installed.

So several possible cases:

1) the scripts are not required because the package include their actions

2) the scripts have been accidentally left out of the packages

3) the scripts are incompatible with ubuntu - directory structure possible - and so were left out.

Bottom line this is the only enterprise quality CA included in the repositories that I could find and there is no documentation so no easy way to use it. This is not something you want to hack at unless you know what you are doing.

Expecting:

install the packages, follow the red hat flavour documentation and translate into ubuntuese

outcome:

documentation impossible to follow after install because of missing scripts

Ubuntu version:

ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS

Package:

dogtag-pki 10.6.0-1ubuntu2
389-ds-base 1.3.7.10-1ubuntu2

[Timo Aaltonen (tjaalton)]

the scripts have been renamed to follow Debian packaging policy, see

https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-files.html#scripts

setup-ds.pl -> setup-ds

[paul chubb (betchern0t)]

It still doesn't match the only extant documentation. Since the documentation defines the specs and a bug is a deviation from the specs, this remains a bug.

[Timo Aaltonen (tjaalton)]

the documentation is redhat specific, as you mentioned, and we can't change it

[Timo Aaltonen (tjaalton)]

(nor shouldn't)

[paul chubb (betchern0t)]

that is not entirely true. Yes we shouldn't go into their project a destroy their documentation for their use on redhat by changing everything to match Ubuntu. However there are several ways to change the documentation to match the debian/ubuntu context and the choice depends on what the copyright steward for the documentation is comfortable with. we could possibly add Ubuntu versions to their document store - if that is what they are comfortable with. We could take their documentation and morph it to match debian/ubuntu in the ubuntu help or community documentation projects. At the very least we could update the useless readme file currently shipped in the package to mention such useful information as the above. All of which depends on what approach they are comfortable with, but we can do more than we currently are. I will be investigating porting their quick start guide which I think is probably the most important document for most people. We will see where I get.

[Timo Aaltonen (tjaalton)]

just fyi that this problem will go away once the migration to the new (python) tools is done, so I wouldn't spend too much time on copying their documentation over to *.ubuntu.com TBH