On install and reinstall nublic-users packages the system gets broken

[davisein]

Uninstalation should deal with that problem. Also the server should be more resistant to recover in case of these errors.

To reproduce just uninstall and reinstall the package. The data from the database gets lost (as expected) but nublic users keep in the system. We have to decide whether to keep the users or not. But if we keep the nublic users we must provide a way so that they work after reinstall.

Nublic users leave some information in:

Apache authentication, unix user, home directory (if the user logs in), etc.

[davisein]

Alex, what do you think about that? What would you do?

[serras]

Basically, the key point is whether users created by Nublic should be deleted when the package is deleted. The current Debian semantics should be that they are deleted only when the package is purged, not when removed. So, my answer would be: do not remove when deleting, do so when purging (and this change should be done also in any package that does some configuration or creates a database).

So, the question now is: what to do if nublic-resource is removed? Because is when nublic-resource is installed when the master database for resources is created, and where the information on how to access this information is recorded. Right now, in any uninstall the resource database gets removed, so when reinstalled the database is created with another name and no previous resource can be accesed.

So, my whole solution would be:

• for nublic-resource, on uninstall leave the database and the information to access it. On purge, remove everything (basically, do nothing when uninstalling and do what it does now for uninstall only when purging). Be careful so in install and updates, the database is not changed nor wiped out,
• mostly the same for any other package: only delete the database from nublic-resource when purging. But, in addition to call 'nublic-resource uninstall', also delete the database from the system, something we don't do right now,
• for nublic-users, when purging, the idea would be to delete any user created by nublic (call nublic-users-manage list and then nublic-users-manage delete on each of them), then delete the nublic users database and finally unregister from resources database.

That's my two cents.