Who was the mental genius

[Paul Schmehl]

--On June 6, 2014 at 5:17:40 PM +0200 Baptiste Daroussin <bapt at FreeBSD.org> 
wrote:

> On Fri, Jun 06, 2014 at 09:34:26AM -0500, Paul Schmehl wrote:
>> --On June 6, 2014 at 10:51:04 AM +0200 Michael Gmelin
>> <grembo at freebsd.org>  wrote:
>>
>> >
>> >
>> >> On 06 Jun 2014, at 10:22, John Marino <freebsd.contact at marino.st>
>> >> wrote:
>> >>
>> >>> On 6/6/2014 10:18, Alfred Perlstein wrote:
>> >>> Sure, but really a couple of lines to warn people and wave them
>> >>> towards next steps is probably advisable next time.
>> >>
>> >> Maybe we can alter the "uname -a" string to show the EOL so that every
>> >> time the machine boots you see it on top of the MOTD.
>> >>
>> >> :)
>> >>
>> >> Of course, that won't help for the turn-on-and-forget servers with
>> >> uptime measured in years...
>> >>
>> >> As a serious questions, where should such a "you have X months/days
>> >> remaining before server is EOL, update before then" messages pop up?
>> >> weekly cron messages sent to root?
>> >
>> > periodic/security/450-check_eol ?(info if < 90 days left, error if past
>> > eol)
>> >
>>
>> EOL notification is not the problem.  The problem is breaking ports at
>> EOL.  That's a special circumstance and begs for notification.  This
>> isn't rocket  science.
>>
>> For at least two months now this notification has been popping up every
>> time I work on ports.
>>
>> /!\ WARNING /!\
>> pkg_install EOL is scheduled for 2014-09-01. Please consider migrating
>> to  pkgng
>> http://blogs.freebsdish.org/portmgr/2014/02/03/time-to-bid-farewell-to-t
>> he-old-pkg_-tools/ If you do not want to see this message again set
>> NO_WARNING_PKG_INSTALL_EOL=yes in your make.conf
>>
>> Do you think I would miss the 9/1 deadline?  Not a chance.  But the
>> advance  warning gives me time to plan the change when it's convenient
>> for me.
>>
>> This change has me scrambling to adapt.  Granted, it only took me a few
>> minutes to figure out what to do, but not everyone has the background
>> and  experience to do that.  Some will simply panic.  Others will switch
>> to  Linux.
>>
>> That doesn't seem like a goal FreeBSD should support.
>
> The mental genius is me apparently (thanks for the kind words, btw) I'm
> responsible for both the pkg_install EOL message and for breaking ports
> tree with older make (btw you can recover with installing manually bmake).
>

No offense was meant.  I deliberately chose the subject to stimulate 
discussion, which it has obviously done.

> Yes it would have been a good idea to give a warning to the user about
> the fact that the ports tree won't be support long on after EOL of 8.3,
> given the ports tree will break again quite soon after EOL of 8.4 I
> should think about adding such a message right now (btw this is not that
> easy in the case we are talking about because I have no way to
> differentiate a fmake with support for :tl from a fmake without support
> for :tu same goes for :tu) hence it is hard to print a message.
>

I fully understand this.  Sometimes figuring out how to warn a user is 
complex and difficult.  However, the decision to inform should not hinge on 
the difficulty of the implementation but on the criticality of the change. 
However, you can detect the RELEASE version and you do know the EOL date, 
so you could base detection on that.

Pseudo warning triggered with every port install or upgrade:
WARNING!!!  8.4 goes EOL on m/d/yy and ports will break.  Be sure to plan 
an upgrade before EOL or, alternatively, use svn -rev to retain your 
current version of ports until you can successfully upgrade.

> Concerning breaking after 8.4 EOL it might be easier.
>

Well, I'm glad you tipped me off to that since I'm presently upgrading to 
8.4.  That *might* have influenced me to go to 9 instead, had I known it 
before deciding.

> The reason why I haven't added a warning like I did for pkg_install is
> that: 1. it is hard to detect when to print the warning (more complicated
> that one can imagine first)
> 2. freebsd-update is already issueing a warning about EOL coming soon so
> I would have expected user to already know when EOL is coming and/or
> getting the info from freebsd-update.
>

Again, this isn't an EOL issue.  EOL is a fact of life.  RELEASES go EOL 
all the time.  They have for decades.  What's different about this is that 
it broke ports.  THAT should not be taken lightly and should require 
thorough thought about how to notify end users in a significant way that's 
not likely to be missed.

The pkg_install message is a *perfect* way of notifying the end user.  It 
can't be missed.  And it nags you every time you install or upgrade a port. 
Something similar should have been done for the change to fmake, and 
certainly needs to be done before 8.4 goes EOL.

I appreciate your willingness to engage on this point, because I think it's 
a critical issue that impacts a lot of users.  Very few of those users will 
complain effectively or in the right forums.  Some of them will simply give 
up and change OSes.  That would be a shame.

The issue wasn't that difficult for me to recover from, and I am proceeding 
with my work.  Others may not be so fortunate.

-- 
Paul Schmehl, Senior Infosec Analyst
As if it wasn't already obvious, my opinions
are my own and not those of my employer.
*******************************************
"It is as useless to argue with those who have
renounced the use of reason as to administer
medication to the dead." Thomas Jefferson
"There are some ideas so wrong that only a very
intelligent person could believe in them." George Orwell