Update Manager / Broken Packages / X Failsafe

[Hervé Fache]

Our competitor has exactly that: last working configuration. That
means the ability to quickly roll back a package. Remember that *they*
store all roll back info in your C:\WINDOWS directory!

Also, I wanted to say that I don't agree with those who say we could
have messed a company's install or something similar: our competitor
has already done this sort of things, and serious companies' IT do not
roll updates until they feel it's safe to do so (my previous one did).

Hervé.

On 8/23/06, Adam Weiss <adam at signal11.com> wrote:
>
> Hey Folks,
>
> You're probably sick of hearing about this, so I apologize in advance.   I
> installed the update, X busted (fyi, the vesa driver was broken too- so a
> xorg.conf rewrite to use vesa as a failsafe wouldn't have helped anyway),
> downgraded the update, everything works, here I am.
>
> The interesting thing that I noticed is that when I started the update
> manager after fixing things, it still had stale information.  Clicking on
> "Check" caused it to see the new fixed package, but had I not done so, it
> would have been perfectly happy to reinstall the busted one.
>
> I'm wondering if this means that the delay time from busted package fix to
> actual install is not just two hours for the replication, but actually 24
> in cases where the package db is updated by the daily cronjob with a
> bad package and the user doesn't actually click the "Check" button.
>
> Would it make sense to change the update manager to automatically try to
> check for updates/refresh whenever it's started?
>
> Also, has anyone given any thought to an emergency brake of sorts to halt
> broken packages as soon as they're known broken?  Something like apt does
> a DNS query that is a combination of the package name and some centrally
> controlled domain that if a result comes back- abort the install?  (I
> don't know, that's kinda janky, but you get the idea: some cheap scalable
> way for the maintainers to immeadiately flag a package as bad.)
>
> I haven't really looked under the hood, but I wonder if it might make
> sense to add a roll-back feature to the update manager.  Something along
> the lines of when you install a bundle of updates, not only are the
> updates downloaded, but also debs for the stuff you have installed that is
> going to be replaced.  In the event of something serious (like X failing
> to start) a console app could walk the user through a "roll-back"- in less
> serious situations, add a button to the update manager itself.  Purge old
> packages after the machine has been rebooted one and n days have elapsed.
> Something like that...
>
> I suspect that the fallout from this particular broken package might be
> pretty nasty and has yet to come... : /
>
> --adam
>
>
>
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