[1195] in athena10
Re: .gconf migration
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Tim Abbott)
Fri Feb 20 10:44:57 2009
Date: Fri, 20 Feb 2009 10:44:01 -0500 (EST)
From: Tim Abbott <tabbott@MIT.EDU>
To: Jonathan D Reed <jdreed@mit.edu>
cc: athena10@mit.edu
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.64L.0902201020530.31552@infinite-loop.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <alpine.DEB.2.00.0902201036370.27355@vinegar-pot.mit.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
On Fri, 20 Feb 2009, Jonathan D Reed wrote:
> Regarding the recent message to testers@, I noticed we're using .gconf
> directories tied to the Ubuntu version. This presumably means that if a user
> who previously used Intrepid logs in to a Jaunty machine, anything they
> customized via gconf will be gone, right? If so, that's unfortunate. We
> should either publicize this, or have a trivial method to migrate settings.
We automatically copy the gconf configuration from intrepid to jaunty the
first time they log into a jaunty machine[1]. This means that if they
later change their configuration on one class of machine, it won't
propagate to the other. The theory here is that if the cluster
environments all upgrade simultaneously, this won't be too confusing. The
testers@ email suggests that this migration code has a bug in it.
We only use the .gconf-debathena-foo hack for users who have an AFS home
directory; this is one of the main applications for the
DEBATHENA_HOME_TYPE environment variable set by
libpam-debathena-home-type.
> Presumably the world doesn't completely break, since users with local homedirs
> (who would presumably only have .gconf) have to migrate somehow...
It doesn't break when you upgrade, but does if you downgrade. You
basically cannot use intrepid gconf configuration on hardy. This isn't a
problem for local users because you can't downgrade, but it is for network
home directories because you can log into an intrepid machine and then log
in to a hardy machine.
-Tim Abbott
[1] We will need to extend the list of releases that the script knows
about before jaunty or sqeeze will actually be copied from, I think.
