etckeeper cron spam => please pass --quiet to `bzr commit`

[Haw Loeung]

Hi,

Using bzr/brz, we're seeing daily autocommit cron spam, e.g.

| /etc/cron.daily/etckeeper:
| Committing to: /etc/
| modified .etckeeper
| modified aliases
| modified apache2/sites-available/....conf
| modified nagios/nrpe.d/check_apache.cfg
| modified nagios/nrpe.d/check_squid.cfg
| Committed revision 20.

Can the autocommit hook for bzr/brz use switches and such to make it more silent / quiet?

[Junien F (axino)]

I wouldn't call that spam, it can be useful. So I guess if we want to make it silent, it should be done via a config file like /etc/default/etckeeper ?

[Paride Legovini (paride)]

I didn't try it, but I had a look at the code and the desired behavior may be achievable by setting

  BZR_COMMIT_OPTIONS="--quiet"

in /etc/etckeeper/etckeeper.conf. See how it's used in /etc/etckeeper/commit.d/50vcs-commit. Could you please try it out and let us know if it works? I'm marking this bug report as Incomplete for now. Thanks!

[Haw Loeung (hloeung)]

With --quiet as Paride suggested works:

| BZR_COMMIT_OPTIONS="--quiet"

| ubuntu@machine-0:/etc$ sudo vi /etc/etckeeper/etckeeper.conf
| ubuntu@machine-0:/etc$ sudo touch testing-etckeeper2
| ubuntu@machine-0:/etc$ sudo etckeeper commit "daily autocommit" >/dev/null
| ubuntu@machine-0:/etc$

Could this be made the default? This makes it consistent with git:

| ubuntu@juju-87625f-hloeung-120:/etc$ sudo touch testing-etckeeper
| ubuntu@juju-87625f-hloeung-120:/etc$ sudo etckeeper commit "daily autocommit" >/dev/null
| ubuntu@juju-87625f-hloeung-120:/etc$ sudo git status
| On branch master
| nothing to commit, working tree clean
| ubuntu@juju-87625f-hloeung-120:/etc$

As in, etckeeper with git doesn't output anything on daily autocommit. With bzr, it currently does.

[Paride Legovini (paride)]

Glad to hear it worked. Given that this bug is minor and that etckeeper is currently a sync from Debian, I think this should be fixed in Debian or even better upstream. If I'm not mistaken the main upstream dev is a Debian Developer which also did several uploads of the package, even if he's not listed as an Uploader in d/control, see:

  https://git.joeyh.name/index.cgi/etckeeper.git/log/
  https://metadata.ftp-master.debian.org/changelogs//main/e/etckeeper/etckeeper_1.18.17-1_changelog

so maybe refiling this bug against the Debian package will count as reporting upstream (I couldn't find a more proper issue tracker). Would you mind doing so? Thanks!

[Haw Loeung (hloeung)]

Done - https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1018874.

[Athos Ribeiro (athos-ribeiro)]

Thanks for reporting it to Debian.

There is still no updates there. Let's keep tracking that bug for now.

[Michał Małoszewski (michal-maloszewski99)]

Triage activity: Still no answer from Debian.