qemu-kvm-extras-static sysctl.d settings remain active when package is removed but not purged

[Loïc Minier]

Binary package hint: qemu-kvm

Hi

This is a reminder that the qemu-arm-static/qemu-kvm-extras-static ship /etc/sysctl.d settings which will remain active while the packages aren't purged.

Bye,

[Dustin Kirkland  (kirkland)]

Hi Loic-

Just doing some house cleaning here. Assigning you this bug, marking it triaged/low, and targeting it at Lucid Beta1. Feel free to adjust as necessary.

Thanks!

[Loïc Minier (lool)]

Ideas on how to resolve the bug are welcome BTW

[Dustin Kirkland  (kirkland)]

I'll have a look. In the meantime, I've dropped the milestone target, since we don't yet have an agreed up approach.

Subscribing Steve Langasek, as he might have some advice.

Steve, any best practices here, on removing sysctl.d settings on package removal?

[Loïc Minier (lool)]

To be clear, in postinst I have:
start procps

and in postrm, on purge, I have:
start procps

This means that the /etc/sysctl.d tree gets applied after install (that's probably ok) and reapplied after purge which is a problem in two ways:
- settings are still applied while the package isn't purged (but only removed); I think that's acceptable, even if not perfect
- settings which were overriden by qemu-kvm-extra-static's /etc/sysctl.d/ config will only be reset if another file in /etc/sysctl.d also sets them; this is true for mmap minaddr for instance, but perhaps not for other settings such as vm.vdso_enabled on i386.

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

Sorry, I can't really see any good solutions for this with the present design. The best I can conceive of is to have the sysctl file stored in /lib somewhere (for which a standard directory should be defined), and have the maintainer scripts manage a symlink to /etc/sysctl.d.

[Dustin Kirkland  (kirkland)]

Unassigning myself, won't-fix for Lucid. This isn't release critical, and no one yet has an approved, suggested approach. Triaged/Wishlist for Maverick.

[Dustin Kirkland  (kirkland)]

Moving this bug over to the qemu-linaro package, which now provides qemu-extras

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

Working on solving this by getting rid of the sysctl.d entirely for this package. We've already dropped the mmap_min_addr setting, and just have one outstanding sysctl setting for disabling vdso on !amd64. Looking for confirmation that this setting can be dropped.