Before anyone bothers with the undead Automatix, now Ultamatix

[Mario Vukelic]

On Sun, 2008-11-02 at 13:58 +0000, R Kimber wrote:
> However some of the
> criticisms don't just apply to Automatix/Ultamatix.  

The examples you cite are in a whole different class than Ultamatix.
Ultamatix uses "sudo apt-get --assume-yes --force-yes remove --purge",
which will delete without asking some packages that the user has
installed explicitly, it will also delete config files and it will do so
without asking. The individual options do the following (partially
extracted from man apt-get):

--assume-yes:  assume "yes" as answer to all prompts and run
non-interactively; abort if an undesirable situation occurs

--force-yes: don't abort after all in undesirable situations. This is a
dangerous option that will cause apt to continue without prompting if it
is doing something potentially harmful. It should not be used except in
very special situations. Using force-yes can potentially destroy your
system!

--purge: delete configuration files, even if changed by the user


> For example, if
> you ask syanptic to remove exim4 it also wants to remove rkhunter,
> inter alia.  

This is something completely different from what Ultamatix does. It also
works correctly as designed. rkhunter depends on a mail transport agent
being installed, its dependencies are "exim4 | postfix | sendmail |
mail-transport-agent". If exim4 is the only mail transport agent on your
system, removing exim4 MUST remove rkhunter as per rkhunter's own
dependency prescriptions.
Any configuration files, however, will not be removed automatically, and
reinstalling rkhunter brings everything back.

> And the upgrade manager will remove exim4 during an
> upgrade, thus screwing up one's carefully crafted email system.

First, I have never seen it do this, so cannot comment. Can you give
more details, I doubt it is as simple as you put it.
Also, config files will most probably not be deleted, so reinstalling
exim4 should fix it.

If what you wrote is indeed the case, then it is a bug that slipped in
and not a case of utter incompetency as is the case with Ultamatix. So,
again something completely different.