ubuntu-phone team mailing list archive

[Steve Langasek <steve.langasek@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, May 02, 2014 at 10:45:11AM -0700, Alex Chiang wrote:
> On Fri, May 2, 2014 at 9:15 AM, Ted Gould <ted@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > On Fri, 2014-05-02 at 08:38 -0700, Alex Chiang wrote:
> > > As a real world example of the services we might want to disable:
> > >
> > > - mediascanner service
> > > - urldispatcher
> > > - mtp-server

> > Hmm, as the upstream for URL Dispatcher that makes me a bit nervous. Why?

> We simply need a supported, maintainable way to disable arbitrary services.

> If you are recommending that we have a conversation with each
> individual service upstream, we are willing to do so, but I'd like
> some of the init system folks to weigh in with an opinion here too.

> [where init system includes both upstart and the future systemd world]

The Foundations team is responsible for init, both before and after the
systemd transition. :)

I have a good deal of sympathy for Ted's position that disabling *arbitrary*
services via the custom image is a serious support problem.  I also
understand that, since we're in early days here, it's not possible to
comprehensively enumerate the individual services that we need to support
override interfaces for in order to get the product to market.

So I view upstart overrides in the custom image as an escape hatch, that
should be used only when all other options to support a more maintainable
interface have been explored and rejected (possibly because they can't be
landed in time).  And each individual upstart override that's being applied
in a custom image should be reviewed (publicly - i.e., here) to make sure
the team can support it going forward, so that those custom images don't
find themselves broken unexpectedly due to changes to the underlying upstart
jobs.

As Ted rightly notes, at some point in the future *all* upstart overrides
are going to break because we're going to stop using upstart as the system
init.  And when that happens, the fewer overrides there are in custom images
in the field, the better off we all are.  So Alex, for those places where
your team is evaluating disabling stock system services, can you please work
with the relevant folks to try to support this a different way?

Upstart support for multiple config dirs is still a useful feature which
we'll try to implement for you, but if it turns out you don't actually need
it in practice because the number of overrides needed is zero, so much the
better.

-- 
Steve Langasek                   Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer                   to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer                                    http://www.debian.org/
slangasek@xxxxxxxxxx                                     vorlon@xxxxxxxxxx

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