Cc'ing debian-release, seeking advice...
Intro for debian-release: this bug makes dhelp wait for potentially
*hours* when upgrading (many packages). That means that if someone upgrades
from Etch to Lenny, they will have to wait for a couple of hours for the dhelp
postinst, while it's asking index++ to reindex all documents for all installed
packages.
This will happen to virtually everyone having dhelp installed if they
dist-upgrade to Lenny. Or anyone doing any reasonably big upgrade for that
matter.
On Tue, Sep 16, 2008 at 09:36:12AM -0700, Ross Boylan wrote:
> On Tue, 2008-09-16 at 14:32 +0200, Miguel Aguado wrote:
> >
> > Ross Boylan is right in that indexing should not stop the upgrade of
> > other packages.
> Originally I thought it was hung up; however the problem seems to be
> that it takes a long time, like several hours.
>
> It is possible the slow speed is a result of a bug in one of the
> indexing packages.
>
> The operation seems to me to take too long to be part of the regular
> upgrade process; I think many people will just decide something is
> broken.
>
> If delays of several hours happen while tracking testing, it seems
> likely the situation will be even worse for people upgrading from stable
> to the next release.
Yes. I hadn't realised this last paragraph myself, sorry.
> > It should be run in the background after a prominent
> > warning for the user, along the lines of:
> This proposal might be inconsistent with how debconf is supposed to be
> used. It also has the problem that if someone interrupts it, for
> example by shutting the system down, it will not resume.
>
> Perhaps an anacron job would be an appropriate solution.
>
> That leaves open the question of what to do before or while the index is
> updating.
I think it is too late to try a "correct" solution. My proposal is to
simply _not_ reindex when installing. This has the downside that people won't
be able to search for documentation in dhelp's search engine until the next
cron.weekly run, but I think that's fair enough compared to the current
problem.
I'm going to provide a new revision of the package without indexing on
package installation/upgrade. The diff is really small (enclose four lines in
a clean "if" statement). Release managers, what do you think? Can this
revision end up in Lenny? Should I upload it ASAP after testing it?
The bug has right now severity "normal", but with this information, I
think it should be at least "important".
> > dhelp: Indexing documentation in the background.
> > **Please note that this process may take HOURS on bulky doc upgrades.**
> > Documentation will not be fully accessible until indexing is complete.
> >
> > (if a further upgrade happens while /usr/bin/index++ is still running,
> > of course, duplicates should be avoided.)
> >
> > I am aware that users of the stable release need not upgrade as often as
> > those of testing or unstable. However, please consider raising the
> > severity of this bug
> This does appear to be a problem that could effectively break upgrades
> to lenny, at least for systems with significant documentation installed.
True. Feel free to upgrade to important.
--
Esteban Manchado Velázquez <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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