[oi-dev] issues with dir action in IPS

[Alexander Pyhalov]

Hi, all.
Jim raised interesting question, and I have no good answer so far. So I 
would like to get more opinions and ideas.

The issue is that when we deliver dir action with package, on package 
uninstall, all unpackaged contents will be moved to /var/pkg/lost+found. 
Now consider it was several-GB log file, database files or some cache. 
Perhaps, you want to preserve content in its usual place, so that 
administrator could somehow use it after package deinstallation. 
Currently you have two options to achieve it:
a) use separate package to deliver dir action, so that, for example, 
service uninstallation didn't removed its log directory,
b) deliver service which would create necessary directories on the first 
run.

B) seems saner... until you end up with dozen services, executing 
essentially the same...

So, it seems natural to have single service to automate 
post-installation tasks. In OpenSolaris/OI we had such service for the 
long time, system/postrun:default. Unfortunately, it had a lot of 
lu-upgrade-related legacy, and I suppose wasn't usable last several 
years on OI (and so was dropped). What do you think about recreating 
similar service, which would execute once generic scripts, delivered by 
packages?

I see two issues: 1) this defeats IPS no-scripting approach :), 2) there 
can be difficulties with non-active images...

Want to listen to your opinions.

-- 
System Administrator of Southern Federal University Computer Center