Hello Theo,
I never for a moment intended to convey that anyone "owed" me support of
any kind for my outside-the-box use of this tool. While I don't
understand your vitriolic response to someone else's application of your
software for their own personal use in a way you do not condone, you are
certainly entitled to be as outraged as you please. I remain grateful
for the work you and others put into the OpenBSD operating system. It
has been made clear on multiple occasions that use of sysupgrade with
anything other than default responses is heretical and cancel-culture
worthy but I don't mind breaking things while experimenting and do not
blame anyone else when this happens, nor do I particularly care if
anyone else is bothered by it as long as no actual harm is being done.
If anyone cares to read my original query from an intellectually honest
perspective I think they would be hard pressed to respond as you have. I
never claimed my "sysupgrade use was completely normal" nor did I blame
the sysupgrade tool for the issue I am attempting to diagnose. I did not
mention my usage of it because logically it does not seem to be relevant
and I was concerned it would become an excuse for people to fly off the
handle. I only had and still only have one question.
Does sysupgrade leave any kind of logging behind which could help me to
pinpoint why it is failing on one system while working on another
apparently identical system?
If the answer is no, that's easy enough to say. If the answer is yes,
that's also easy enough if anyone is willing to share where those logs
would be found. If the answer is, "Maybe, but no one owes you that
information" that is also perfectly true while kind of pointless to even
bother saying, although a world where people only offer help to others
when there is a financial obligation would be a dismal place indeed.
I did not and do not expect anyone else to solve my problem for me. If
you have reason to believe that my "mis-"usage of sysupgrade has
anything at all to do with this issue, I'd be curious to know how you
would explain it working on 4 out of 6 systems. Since it seems unlikely
that the exact same tool would work two different ways on two identical
systems then logically I would assume that some subtle difference exists
between them and was hopeful that any records of the sysupgrade process
would help me identify that difference. I have been using this script on
these and other less similar systems ever since the sysupgrade tool was
released with no issues, and therefore I think it's reasonable to to
conclude that using it this way, while not officially sanctioned, has
nothing to do with what's going on in this particular case.
Thank you again for your work on OpenBSD, including sysupgrade.
To everyone else on the mailing list, I do not apologize for asking a
question but I do apologize for the drama it provoked.
Judah
On 2/14/21 6:44 PM, Theo de Raadt wrote:
You are outside the box, by changing tons of stuff.
People who operate inside the box won't be able to help you.
And it is even less likely when you are dishonest in the original email.
You claimed your sysupgrade use was completely normal, but it isn't.
It is far from normal.
When we get reports like this where people "touch the insides", both
Florian and I regret that sysupgrade ever arrived in the system.
We want to delete sysupgrade. Or, every month or so change the internals
so that it will delete some people's machines.
Does sysupgrade recommend what you do? No. But you do it. Do you understand
the concept of "you own all the pieces"?
