[gentoo-dev] Re: news item for udev 197-r3 upgrade (yes, I know, it's late)

[Duncan]

Samuli Suominen posted on Thu, 24 Jan 2013 04:04:19 +0200 as excerpted:

> On 23/01/13 21:06, Felix Kuperjans wrote:
>>> On Wed, Jan 23, 2013 at 1:29 PM, Felix Kuperjans
>>> <felix@××××××××××××××.com> wrote:
>>>> Samuli Suominen wrote:
>>>>> please review this news item
>>>>
>>>> /dev/root is no longer available in this udev version
>>>>
>>>> I suggest including in the news item, that /dev/root must be replaced
>>>> with the actual root device or LABEL=..., UUID=... and the like in
>>>> /etc/fstab.
>>>>
>> Well, *if* a line with /dev/root is present in /etc/fstab, the system
>> does not boot up properly (tested it right now).
>> I always though such a line in /etc/fstab is needed so that fsck is run
>> on the root filesystem...
>>
>> Removing the line completely boots up fine, but the filesystem has not
>> been fscked on boot.
>
> I don't think we ever instructed users for adding such line... if we
> did, I'll eat my words.
> So, I don't think it's necessary to instruct them away from it either,
> never seen such fstab line.

Well technically, we used (and still use, see below) the uppercase 
/dev/ROOT, with instructions documenting what to replace it with.  But 
some users apparently simply lowercased that ROOT, and for years it "just 
worked". (Below output edited slightly for posting. $>> indicates the 
shell prompt.):

$>>equery b fstab
 * Searching for fstab ... 
sys-apps/baselayout-2.2 (/usr/share/baselayout/fstab)

$>>grep -i /dev/root /usr/share/baselayout/fstab
/dev/ROOT           /            ext3         noatime         0 1

$>>

[TLDR folks can stop there.  The rest is historic observation, arguably 
interesting, admittedly ranty, but not vital.]

Years ago (remember, my first successful gentoo install was 2004.1), the 
fstab example file found in /usr/share/baselayout/fstab was packaged as 
/etc/fstab directly.  Now, the handbook of the era took great pains to 
guide people thru editing it appropriately, saying the ALLCAPS entries 
were intended to be replaced as appropriate for the individual install, 
AND people were expected to actually use etc-update or the like for its 
intended purpose, so people weren't /supposed/ to have it simply 
overwritten.

Unfortunately, a lot of folks (<sarcasm> yes, gentooers, could you 
believe it? </sarcasm>) couldn't read instructions properly, and I'd say 
gentoo-user averaged at least two threads a month from folks who had 
killed their fstab with an update and a simple etc-update direct-replace, 
or couldn't get gentoo self-booting in the first place due to not editing 
the file at all, despite the instructions to do so.

And I'm sure many more read the threads on the list and in the forums, 
and didn't make a mistake they otherwise would have...  I know I 
certainly did.  I've said before that I was actively helping people on 
the lists well before I got my own gentoo system up and running.  (Turned 
out there was a bug in at least amd64's 2004.0 handling of the then still 
new NPTL, that I ran into somewhere along the way.  I don't know what the 
fix was, but 2004.1 installed just fine from stage-1, so it must have 
been fixed...  As a result, I was active on the lists for several months 
before I actually got my own install working, by which time I knew the 
documentation pretty well, given the help I was giving to others based on 
it the whole time.)


Some of us were actually rather sad to see the file moved to /usr/share, 
since with it working as it did, gentoo newbies tended to learn to 
actually pay attention to the instructions reasonably early on, after 
being pointed to them.  As I've said before, it was well known and 
frequently posted in the user lists back then that gentoo wasn't a 
handholding distribution.  Gentooers, as sysadmins of their own systems, 
were expected to take responsibility for them, reading instructions, 
etc.  If they preferred not to or couldn't learn to do so after a couple 
mistakes like that, well, there were (and are still) other distributions 
more suited to them, and in all seriousness, not to put people down but 
simply to recommend a distro that would be a better fit for them, it 
wasn't rare at all to see a recommendation that people seriously assess 
whether they wanted to take on that responsibility, and if not, they 
really should be on a different distro, as gentoo definitely wasn't for 
them!


So a /dev/ROOT entry was and actually still is part of the default fstab, 
it's just that the baselayout package places that fstab elsewhere, these 
days.

Evidently, some users saw the example and simply lowercased that 
/dev/ROOT entry into /dev/root, despite the handbook specifically 
recommending replacing it with the appropriate /dev/[sh]daX parameter, 
and because of the kernel/devfs/udev entry for that, it "just worked".

Now that long stale entry is beginning to cause issues.


Meanwhile, if we still shipped /etc/fstab directly, as back then, I 
expect we'd have way less troubles with people not paying attention to 
instructions and trying to foist their responsibilities as sysadmin onto 
gentoo devs, as they'd either learn how vital it is early on, or 
ultimately go looking for a distribution more appropriately matched to 
their needs.  IMO the mistake we've made is that we TRY TOO HARD to 
coddle users, doing a good enough job of it most of the time that they 
expect it ALL the time now.  But as I've said before, gentoo's not ABOUT 
handholding/babysitting, or at least it wasn't.  If that's what people 
want/need/expect, no shame in admitting it.  Rather, there's pride in the 
fact that a user could intelligently assess the situation and make a 
reasonable decision that gentoo is NOT for them.  There's all sorts of 
distros standing in /line/ to fill that coddling spot, and it's something 
gentoo simply cannot and will not ever be good at, so why do we try so 
hard, only to let people down at the worst time because we're effectively 
promising them a coddling service we can't reliably deliver?


Yes, deliver the documentation.  Print a warning in pkg_pretend and in 
pkg_postinst as well.  Maybe even do a news item if we think it's worth 
the trouble.  But after that, RESOLVED/READTHEDOCS.  It'll be worse for a 
few months, but soon enough, we should have far fewer bugs of that sort, 
as people will have learned.


And yes, that may seem a rather harsh policy.  But gentoo was attracting 
users in droves back then and was a seriously up and coming distro.  Now 
look at it.  We have are nitch, yes, but we're afraid to properly claim 
it and unhesitatingly recommend that people look elsewhere if they find 
it inappropriate for them.  We've lost the identity that make gentoo what 
it /was/, and in the process, we've simply become one among many, an 
"also-ran".

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman