[Bug 188542] Review Request: hylafax

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

 



Please do not reply directly to this email. All additional
comments should be made in the comments box of this bug.


https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=188542

--- Comment #120 from Lee Howard <faxguy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 2011-10-26 03:33:00 EDT ---
While I'm not averse to creating man pages for every executable installed, I
remain unconvinced and highly sceptical that doing so for executables not
designed to be run by users would have any meaningful value.  Even in a minimal
install Fedora has very numerous executables installed which do not have man
pages, and as a Fedora use I have never once have wanted to run those
executables directly or have been disappointed by there not being a man page
for them.

Not everything that utilizes files and scripts from the traditional
/var/spool/hylafax directory operates within the chroot, and so renaming that
"spool" directory to /var/hylafax/chroot is misleading.  I would be agreeable
to move it to /var/hylafax.  I think that this was suggested before in Comment
#94.  However, both this and your suggestion seems to violate the FHS:

http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html#PURPOSE31

"Applications must generally not add directories to the top level of /var. Such
directories should only be added if they have some system-wide implication, and
in consultation with the FHS mailing list."

For what it may be worth, the contents of the "HylaFAX spool" directory are as
follows:

drwx------ 2 uucp uucp  4096 2010-05-02 20:50 archive
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root  4096 2010-07-30 15:41 bin
drwxr-xr-x 2 uucp uucp  4096 2011-10-25 11:08 client
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root  4096 2010-07-30 15:41 config
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root  4096 2010-05-02 20:50 dev
drwx------ 2 uucp uucp  4096 2011-10-25 13:01 docq
drwx------ 2 uucp uucp  4096 2011-10-25 12:01 doneq
drwxr-xr-x 2 uucp uucp  4096 2011-10-25 03:47 etc
drwxr-xr-x 2 uucp uucp  4096 2011-10-25 11:08 info
drwxr-xr-x 2 uucp uucp 77824 2011-10-25 16:55 log
drwx------ 2 uucp uucp  4096 2010-05-02 20:50 pollq
drwxr-xr-x 2 uucp uucp 36864 2011-10-25 16:55 recvq
drwx------ 2 uucp uucp  4096 2011-10-25 11:08 sendq
drwxr-xr-x 2 uucp uucp  4096 2010-05-02 20:50 status
drwx------ 2 uucp uucp  4096 2011-10-25 11:06 tmp

Additionally, there are FIFOs for each modem and one for faxq created there.

The directories archive, client, docq, doneq, info, log, pollq, recvq, sendq,
status, and tmp are all true spool directories per the FHS definition you cite.

The bin, dev, and etc directories are the ones raising concerns (and namely
bin), and they all are there so that they can be accessible to the hfaxd client
from within the chroot.

The dev directory is there for access to /dev/null.  The etc directory is there
so that the administrative hfaxd client could manipulate configuration files. 
The bin directory is only there for needful operations within the chroot.

You can maybe think of it as a type of hybrid between lpd and ftp.  Imagine a
printing client/driver that could send print jobs to the server but also
retrieve copies of previous print jobs and change various types of operations
in the print server.

Recognize that HylaFAX heralds from a time 20 years ago when FHS didn't exist. 
So it's not like HylaFAX was developed in direct violation of FHS - rather, FHS
was developed without consideration of HylaFAX.

Both Gentoo and Debian have HylaFAX ports, and both have left
/var/spool/hylafax there.  (However, in attempting to address the FHS concern
Debian has done some cumbersome synchronizing work to duplicate files from
/var/spool/hylafax/bin and /var/spool/hylafax/etc into /etc/hylafax - or
something like that.  I'm not sure how this helps alleviate the FHS concern,
though.)

My perspective on this is that the FHS just does not have an appropriate
categorization for service-level applications that allow client access to
scripts and configuration files from within a chroot that 99% of the time is
used for spool purposes.

However, if moving /var/spool/hylafax to /var/hylafax will resolve the
concerns, then I am willing to do that.

-- 
Configure bugmail: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email
------- You are receiving this mail because: -------
You are the QA contact for the bug.
_______________________________________________
package-review mailing list
package-review@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/package-review


[Index of Archives]     [Fedora Legacy]     [Fedora Desktop]     [Fedora SELinux]     [Yosemite News]     [KDE Users]     [Fedora Tools]