On 8/23/20 10:50 AM, Geert Hendrickx via arch-general wrote: > Hi > > A number of packages depend on inetutils merely for the `hostname` command. > Common packages include xorg-xinit and mariadb, which makes that inetutils > is still installed on a large number of Arch systems, although its other > components like rcp, rsh, talk, telnet ... and their server counterparts, > are really old, deprecated, and totally insecure. Plus the implementation > seems to be largely abandoned by upstream (see FS#61041). Needless to say, > I don't want any of these installed on my systems. Why is it bad if you have it installed but not running? Anyway, xorg-xinit could probably not depend on inetutils at all, since it only uses it to check `xauth list "$(hostname -f)"` which will always fail because you actually do not want the --fqdn there. (For some odd reason it only does this if you're using Linux *and* a GNU implementation like the inetutils or gettext ones, but for busybox it omits the -f, even though busybox supports -f.) It makes no practical difference whether the routine fails because of a programming error or because of a missing dependency. You could use https://www.archlinux.org/packages/community/any/sx/ which doesn't depend on inetutils. For xorg-xinit, Geert's proposed patch gets rid of the incorrect -fqdn as a side effect of switching to the portable uname -n. > Since `hostname` is still somewhat common though, there are probably more > implicit dependencies on it, for example FS#66603. > > So I would like to eliminate dependencies on inetutils just for hostname, > in one of the following ways: > > 1/ Split the inetutils package and provide hostname as a sub-package (but > then still need to maintain inetutils) > > 2/ Package the Debian implementation, also used by Fedora and others (but > this includes other legacy shit like `nisdomainname` and `ypdomainname`) > See https://packages.qa.debian.org/h/hostname.html > > 3/ Use the implementation provided by gettext (/usr/lib/gettext/hostname), > which is already part of base, and thus eliminates the need for explicit > dependencies. Although this implementation can only *get* the hostname, > not *set* it, that's all the dependent packages need, and setting the > hostname is nowadays handled by systemd's `hostnamectl` anyway. Or 4) submit upstream patches to make such programs first try to read /proc/sys/kernel/hostname instead of shelling out, or invoke `uname -n` rather than `hostname`. The gettext thing seems like deep, dark magic, and the fact that a hostname program even exists in there is due to deep dark magic inside /usr/bin/msginit which invokes the shell script /usr/lib/gettext/user-email in order to grep various programs (mutt, openoffice, Thunderbird, netscape, emacs) with complicated fallbacks before prompting you to select an option or input your own email address when authoring a PO translation file. I don't think we should be relying on this level of indirection. It could be dropped at any time. > My preference would be 3/, for simplicity. I already run my systems with > /usr/bin/hostname symlinked to /usr/lib/gettext/hostname (after forcibly > removing inetutils), and noticed no issues. > > This can be done in two steps: > i. make the gettext package install (or symlink) /usr/bin/hostname, > drop it from inetutils, and introduce mutual conflicts on older > versions of each. > ii. drop the dependency on inetutils from other packages (or replace it > with a dependency on hostname if options 1/ or 2/ are preferred). > > Fans of `telnet` can continue to install inetutils manually, of course. ;-) Eventually we will have https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/User:Allan/Alternatives and then you could install your own preferred hostname implementation without conflicts. It would not be unreasonable at that time to make packages depend on a virtual provides for "hostname". -- Eli Schwartz Bug Wrangler and Trusted User
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