Postinsts barfing when mysqld not running

[Michael Bienia]

On 2007-08-17 16:50:27 -0400, Barry deFreese wrote:
> For simba, I did something like this in the simba.postinst:
> 
> # Check if mysqlserver is running
> if [ -e "/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock" ]; then
> ...
> else
>     echo "W: Database server does not appear to be running!"
>     echo "W: Please try dpkg-reconfigure simba to configure the package."
> fi

This check will fail if the database server runs on an other host.

> Should I tell them to install a database server and make sure it's 
> running, then reconfigure the package.  Or am I approaching this the 
> wrong way entirely?

It's a valid configuration to have the database on an other host.
Therefore similar packages like simba depend only on a database client
(which will hopefully know where to reach the database) and suggest the
database server at best.

Michael