[Bug 1245604] Re: "killall -u snmp" in a pre-install step kills any running snmpd

[ChristianEhrhardt]

snmp and snmpd are part of one source being: net-snmp

I could confirm that this still affects wily/upstream

The killall was introduced way back by
  * debian/snmp.preinst, debian/snmp.prerm: kill any/all processes owned by
    snmp user before install/uninstall, LP: #573391
 -- Dustin Kirkland <kirkland at ubuntu.com> Tue, 22 Jun 2010 14:04:48 -0500


Gimmick: killall is psmisc which is not a dependency of snmp - if we keep the killall we would have to add this dependency

The killall is done with "-u snmp" but no binary is given, so it kills everything of that user.
The reason for that was, that certain scripts would call deluser which fails as long as  a user is logged in.

There would be complex solutions like storing&restoring the service state.
But it turns out that the original motivation why the killall was added is gone.
These days the install scripts no more call deluser (only snmpd.postrm).

So we can just remove the killall introduced by LP: #573391 to fix LP:
#1245604

At the same time I submitted an equivalent fix to debian to fix it as
well and one day be able to drop the diff.

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Title:
  "killall -u snmp" in a pre-install step kills any running snmpd

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