Bug#1055645: orphan-sysvinit-scripts: Please take over mdadm init script

[Stephan Seitz]

Package: orphan-sysvinit-scripts
Version: 0.15
Severity: wishlist

Dear Maintainer,

the <please insert terrible curse> mdadm maintainer has dropped the
initscript without warning:

mdadm (4.2+20230227-1) experimental; urgency=medium
* Removing sysvinit scripts in favour of systemd units:
- properly checkrestart mdmonitor (Closes: #815834).
- no update-rc.d warnings anymore (Closes: #822354).
- properly shutdown (Closes: #829621).
- making /etc/default/mdadm obsolete for most things (Closes: #850180).
* Removing cron jobs in favour of systemd timers:
- daily checks also work if system is not always on (Closes: #889978).

Even the cronjob is gone.

Can you please take over the missing files?

Many greetings,

Stephan


-- System Information:
Debian Release: trixie/sid
APT prefers oldstable-updates
APT policy: (900, 'oldstable-updates'), (900, 'testing')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 6.6.1 (SMP w/8 CPU threads; PREEMPT)
Locale: LANG=de_DE.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=de_DE.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE not set
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /usr/bin/dash
Init: sysvinit (via /sbin/init)
LSM: AppArmor: enabled

Versions of packages orphan-sysvinit-scripts depends on:
ii ucf 3.0043+nmu1

orphan-sysvinit-scripts recommends no packages.

orphan-sysvinit-scripts suggests no packages.

-- no debconf information

--
| If your life was a horse, you'd have to shoot it. |

[Lorenzo]

Control: tags -1 patch

Hello Matthew,

attached is a git patch that adds mdadm and mdadm-waitidle
scripts.

On Thu, 9 Nov 2023 16:09:22 +0100
Stephan Seitz <stse+de...@rootsland.net> wrote:

> [...]

> * Removing cron jobs in favour of systemd timers:
> - daily checks also work if system is not always on (Closes:
> #889978).

I thought that anacron could handle this..

>
> Even the cronjob is gone.

sorry, the patch does not include cronjob since o-s-s does not have
a way to handle it.
By the way I don't remember a project consensus for dropping
cronjobs in favour of timers..

Best Regards,
Lorenzo

[tito]

On Fri, 1 Dec 2023 02:41:21 +0100
Lorenzo <plor...@disroot.org> wrote:

> Control: tags -1 patch
>
> Hello Matthew,
>
> attached is a git patch that adds mdadm and mdadm-waitidle
> scripts.
>
> On Thu, 9 Nov 2023 16:09:22 +0100
> Stephan Seitz <stse+de...@rootsland.net> wrote:
>
> > [...]
>
> > * Removing cron jobs in favour of systemd timers:
> > - daily checks also work if system is not always on (Closes:
> > #889978).
> I thought that anacron could handle this..
>
> >
> > Even the cronjob is gone.
>
> sorry, the patch does not include cronjob since o-s-s does not have
> a way to handle it.

Couldn't it be appended to crontab?

> By the way I don't remember a project consensus for dropping
> cronjobs in favour of timers..
>
> Best Regards,
> Lorenzo
>

Hi,
shouldn't /etc/default/mdadm be moved also to o-s-s?
I bet it is the next file to be dropped after timers

Ciao,
Tito

[Lorenzo]

On Fri, 1 Dec 2023 07:53:57 +0100
tito <farm...@tiscali.it> wrote:

> > >
> > > Even the cronjob is gone.
> >
> > sorry, the patch does not include cronjob since o-s-s does not have
> > a way to handle it.
>
> Couldn't it be appended to crontab?

there is no mechanism to selectively add (and remove/purge) additional
file or snippets such as cronjobs or /etc/default/*

> Hi,
> shouldn't /etc/default/mdadm be moved also to o-s-s?
> I bet it is the next file to be dropped after timers

can't find the file, even in buster
https://packages.debian.org/buster/amd64/mdadm/filelist

Well, I have it on my system but same problem as for the cronjob

$ cat /etc/default/mdadm
# mdadm Debian configuration
#
# You can run 'dpkg-reconfigure mdadm' to modify the values in this file, if
# you want. You can also change the values here and changes will be preserved.
# Do note that only the values are preserved; the rest of the file is
# rewritten.
#

# AUTOCHECK:
# should mdadm run periodic redundancy checks over your arrays? See
# /etc/cron.d/mdadm.
AUTOCHECK=true

# AUTOSCAN:
# should mdadm check once a day for degraded arrays? See
# /lib/systemd/system/mdmonitor-oneshot.service
AUTOSCAN=true

# START_DAEMON:
# should mdadm start the MD monitoring daemon during boot?
START_DAEMON=true

# DAEMON_OPTIONS:
# additional options to pass to the daemon.
DAEMON_OPTIONS="--syslog"

# VERBOSE:
# if this variable is set to true, mdadm will be a little more verbose e.g.
# when creating the initramfs.
VERBOSE=false


Lorenzo

>
> Ciao,
> Tito

[tito]

On Fri, 1 Dec 2023 09:48:50 +0100
Lorenzo <plor...@disroot.org> wrote:

> On Fri, 1 Dec 2023 07:53:57 +0100
> tito <farm...@tiscali.it> wrote:
>
> > > >
> > > > Even the cronjob is gone.
> > >
> > > sorry, the patch does not include cronjob since o-s-s does not have
> > > a way to handle it.
> >
> > Couldn't it be appended to crontab?
> there is no mechanism to selectively add (and remove/purge) additional
> file or snippets such as cronjobs or /etc/default/*
>
> > Hi,
> > shouldn't /etc/default/mdadm be moved also to o-s-s?
> > I bet it is the next file to be dropped after timers
>
> can't find the file, even in buster
> https://packages.debian.org/buster/amd64/mdadm/filelist
>
> Well, I have it on my system but same problem as for the cronjob

Hi,
but the file is still referenced in /etc/init.d/mdadm

# grep /etc/default/mdadm /etc/init.d/mdadm*
/etc/init.d/mdadm:DEBIANCONFIG=/etc/default/mdadm

from the 5 variables set in /etc/default/mdadm:

AUTOCHECK, AUTOSCAN, VERBOSE at a first glance are ignored

START_DAEMON has already been moved to the initscript
so that from the /etc/default/mdadm you can only turn
the initscript off.

I would propose to move DAEMON_OPTIONS="--syslog"
to the initscript so that we can forget about /etc/default/mdadm.

The cronjob that will be removed soon is still a problem as it checks the arrays periodically

# By default, run at 00:57 on every Sunday, but do nothing unless the day of
# the month is less than or equal to 7. Thus, only run on the first Sunday of
# each month. crontab(5) sucks, unfortunately, in this regard; therefore this
# hack (see #380425).
57 0 * * 0 root if [ -x /usr/share/mdadm/checkarray ] && [ $(date +\%d) -le 7 ]; then /usr/share/mdadm/checkarray --cron --all --idle --quiet; fi

There will be other cron jobs like this that will be susbtituted by systemd timers
so we need to find how to handle this.

Ciao,
Tito

[Thorsten Glaser]

On Fri, 1 Dec 2023, Lorenzo wrote:

>> > > Even the cronjob is gone.
>> >
>> > sorry, the patch does not include cronjob since o-s-s does not have
>> > a way to handle it.
>>
>> Couldn't it be appended to crontab?
>there is no mechanism to selectively add (and remove/purge) additional
>file or snippets such as cronjobs or /etc/default/*

But you can write the cronjobs so that they are inert if the
dæmon is absent (which should be done anyway), and users can
chmod -x files in /etc/cron.{hourly,daily,weekly,monthly} to
disable them (however not for /etc/cron.d/ though).

OTOH, the cronjob removal is n̲o̲t̲ something agreed upon. This
is maybe something to take to d-devel.

bye,
//mirabilos
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[Lorenzo]

Hi,

On Fri, 1 Dec 2023 13:27:58 +0100
tito <farm...@tiscali.it> wrote:


> Hi,
> but the file is still referenced in /etc/init.d/mdadm
>
> # grep /etc/default/mdadm /etc/init.d/mdadm*
> /etc/init.d/mdadm:DEBIANCONFIG=/etc/default/mdadm
>
> from the 5 variables set in /etc/default/mdadm:
>
> AUTOCHECK, AUTOSCAN, VERBOSE at a first glance are ignored
>
> START_DAEMON has already been moved to the initscript
> so that from the /etc/default/mdadm you can only turn
> the initscript off.
>
> I would propose to move DAEMON_OPTIONS="--syslog"
> to the initscript so that we can forget about
> /etc/default/mdadm.

I'm attaching the amended patch so that the script works without
/etc/default/mdadm, but it still includes the file if it's there

>
> The cronjob that will be removed soon is still a problem as it checks
> the arrays periodically

I'm not saying that it's not a problem, but I think it's a separate bug.
Also, before doing any attempts on this, Matthew has to say if he's ok
with maintaining cronjobs in this package and if yes, how this should
be done.

Best,
Lorenzo

[Mark Hindley]

On Sat, Dec 02, 2023 at 01:02:48AM +0100, Lorenzo wrote:
> >
> > The cronjob that will be removed soon is still a problem as it checks
> > the arrays periodically
>
> I'm not saying that it's not a problem, but I think it's a separate bug.
> Also, before doing any attempts on this, Matthew has to say if he's ok
> with maintaining cronjobs in this package and if yes, how this should
> be done.

I think he has already said he isn't happy with that.

I have already submitted a bug with patch to reinstate the cron jobs[1]
alongside the systemd timers.

Mark

[1] https://bugs.debian.org/1055994