Bug 3722 – Packages outside of section user/* should be backed up when Red Pill is enabled

Bug 3722 - Packages outside of section user/* should be backed up when Red Pill is enabled


Summary:	Packages outside of section user/* should be backed up when Red Pill is enabled

Status:	RESOLVED WONTFIX

Product:	Settings and Maintenance
Component:	Backup/Restore
Version:	4.1.1 (4.2008.30-2)
Platform:	All Maemo

Importance:	Low enhancement (vote)
Target Milestone:	---
Assigned To:	unassigned
QA Contact:	application-manager-bugs

URL:
Keywords:

Depends on:
Blocks:
	Show dependency tree

Reported:	2008-09-17 22:14 UTC by tz
Modified:	2009-10-01 19:34 UTC (History)
CC List:	3 users (show)

See Also:

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Description tz (reporter) 2008-09-17 22:14:52 UTC

SOFTWARE VERSION:
(Control Panel > General > About product)
4.2008.30-2

STEPS TO REPRODUCE THE PROBLEM:
Flash an n800 or n810 to the current version of the software (Diablo).

Install various applications from many archives.  Activate red pill mode. 
Install a few more applications (note there is no indication in the packages
list screen of which are newly visible or which are from different repositories
or anything else).

Do a normal backup to MMC using the standard utility and include applications
(and everything else - check all the boxes).

Reflash to the identical version (NOT UPGRADING).

Go through the restore procedure, restoring everything else, and launching
application manager (which should begin the restore).

Again this is NOT AN UPGRADE.  It is from 4.2008.30-2 to 4.2008.30-2, and
ordinary installation of listed packages which were installed a few hours or
minutes before the second flash.

EXPECTED OUTCOME:
All the packages installed after the first reflash will eventually be restored,
perhaps after multiple invocations of restore applications.  There may be some
repositories or other things where I might have to re-enable and/or turn on Red
Pill mode, but eventually everything I originally installed USING APPLICATION
MANAGER will either be restored.

If anything wasn't going to be restored, it should have told me AT THE TIME OF
INSTALLATION it was not going to flag it for backup, and or allow me to take
another action like downloading the package file to a MMC directory so I could
install it manually.

I know I shouldn't use apt-get or dpkg utilities for any installations or
upgrades since that confuses things.  Everything should be done via Application
manager.

ACTUAL OUTCOME:

Apparently randomly, some packages are restored, some don't even appear in the
list.  There is no indication either during installation of the package, during
backup, OR any other time which installed packages will be restored and which
ones will not be restored.  There may be a restoration list somewhere but that
is not an editable or user accessible file.

There is no visible (google or other searches) documentation on this behavior
(I haven't looked in the very large source tree, but that isn't documentation).

I am all but required to use dpkg and apt-get after the reflash (and even
before to get the list of installed packages instead of guessing).

REPRODUCIBILITY:
(always/sometimes/once)
Always

EXTRA SOFTWARE INSTALLED:
tcpdump, wget, bluez-utils.

OTHER COMMENTS:
Many programs are and have been stable for a long time.  If it is a matter of
getting them to cross some repository boundary to be blue-pill approved, that
should be done instead, but right now there is no indication (even if I return
to blue pill) of which packages those are.

Any of the following would fix this:

1. If the archive is NOT going to be flagged for restoration, give an
indication WHEN I INSTALL and/or allow me to cache the .deb file on the MMC or
somewhere else so I can restore it manually after the reflash.  Or maintain in
backups a packages_not_automatically_restored list which will be backed up so I
don't have to use notepad.

2. Document the behavior (if it is simple and easily determined) in enough
detail so I don't have to guess.  I doubt it is truly random, but looking at
the all list, which ones will be installed and which ones won't be - is there
information if I hit the information icon somewhere I haven't noticed?

3. Add/mark EVERY packages for normal restoration.  If it was outside whatever
boundary, ask if I really want to restore it or dim it like missing
repositories, or even remove them from the list until I turn on Red Pill mode
or whatever else to make them visible in the list.

4. Add a "download package file only" option so it would create the cache and I
could just manually install everything deb by deb.  At least I won't miss
anything.

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.8)
Gecko/20071008 Firefox/2.0.0.8

Comment 1 tz (reporter) 2008-09-17 22:46:33 UTC

One clarification.  Nowhere does any document including the Maemo platform
documentation that talks about "red pill mode" say anything other than about
visibility for "user".  E.g. the "Maemo Diablo Reference Manual for maemo 4.1
(DRAFT)" or
https://stage.maemo.org/svn/maemo/projects/haf/maemo-tags/hildon-bits/hildon-application-manager_1_1.9.6/doc/repository.txt

Is the tagging for backup related to this or not?  What is or is not tagged for
backup does not seem to be documented in anything I have found so far.

Comment 2 Ryan Abel maemo.org

2008-09-17 22:49:41 UTC

This should either be an enhancement or INVALID. Red Pill is clearly not
supported, so this isn't a bug, it's the expected behavior.

The summary is incorrect and misleading, there's nothing random about it.
Packages outside of section user/* aren't dealt with by Backup, because users
aren't able to deal with them directly through supported methods.

Moving, correctly summary, and fixing severity.

Comment 3 tz (reporter) 2008-09-18 15:39:51 UTC

No, This new summary is wrong, because there equally is NO indication a package
is inside or outside of user/* in the list.  If I can't tell if a package is
inside or outside when I install it, and it doesn't tell me, the pattern
appears random.  It isn't random to you but at the same time you don't explain
how on the install screen for all (since I'm usually installing multiple
packages) I can tell if something will or will not be backed up.

It is also possible that some external repositories have packages outside of
"user".  Your repository howto just points to Debian HowTo without giving much
more detail.

So I've read all the official information on repositories.  Maybe the bug is
that a number of utility packages which should be in a user visible are in
somewhere other than user, and if so, I'll file "enhancement" bugs so they will
get moved so they will be visible, and restored.

Various documents from Maemo for development say "To do this, you need to
enable Red Pill mode", but say nothing more other than new packages will be
visible/available in application manager (it could just day apt-get install
them in terminal).  They don't say that once visible that the application
manager will treat them differently.  And there is documentation on "Red Pill
Mode", and Backup/Restore, but I've not found anything so far that explains it
is user/*

Bugzilla is not a source for Maemo documentation, but the discussion here is
the only place where the behavior is explained.

Minimally - in the places in the official documentation you DO document red
pill mode - you should add the warning that packages visible only under Red
Pill will not be backed up.

Comment 4 Ryan Abel maemo.org

2008-09-18 16:05:53 UTC

(In reply to comment #3)
> No, This new summary is wrong, because there equally is NO indication a package
> is inside or outside of user/* in the list.  If I can't tell if a package is
> inside or outside when I install it, and it doesn't tell me, the pattern
> appears random.  It isn't random to you but at the same time you don't explain
> how on the install screen for all (since I'm usually installing multiple
> packages) I can tell if something will or will not be backed up.
> 

The simple solution is, don't use Red Pill. If you've got something that
Application manager refuses to install in Blue Pill, then install it using
apt-get or dpkg. You're asking for trouble running in Red Pill all the time
(Red Pill is, in fact, the root of most of the "bugs" on Application manager
you've reported).

> It is also possible that some external repositories have packages outside of
> "user".  Your repository howto just points to Debian HowTo without giving much
> more detail.
> 

I don't have any howtos. If it doesn't show up in Blue Pill, it wont be backed
up.

> So I've read all the official information on repositories.  Maybe the bug is
> that a number of utility packages which should be in a user visible are in
> somewhere other than user, and if so, I'll file "enhancement" bugs so they will
> get moved so they will be visible, and restored.
> 

If packages are outside of user/* and shouldn't be, then that's a bug, but my
suspicion is that a lot of the packages you're installing that are outside of
user/* are outside of user/* because they SHOULD be, and normal users should
never see them.

> Various documents from Maemo for development say "To do this, you need to
> enable Red Pill mode", but say nothing more other than new packages will be
> visible/available in application manager (it could just day apt-get install
> them in terminal).  They don't say that once visible that the application
> manager will treat them differently.  And there is documentation on "Red Pill
> Mode", and Backup/Restore, but I've not found anything so far that explains it
> is user/*
> 

Red Pill is, unfortunately, touted around a lot as a fix-all for things that it
really doesn't fix. It should be used with caution.

I've done everything I can to purge it from documentation I have sway over
(i.e., the wiki), but there are lots of places that I don't control.

> Minimally - in the places in the official documentation you DO document red
> pill mode - you should add the warning that packages visible only under Red
> Pill will not be backed up.
> 

That sounds perfectly reasonable, so file a separate enhancement request
against the documentation for that.

Remember: One bug per issue.

Comment 5 Andre Klapper maemo.org

2008-09-22 13:27:12 UTC

(valid enhancement request, though most probably a WONTFIX.)

Comment 6 tz (reporter) 2008-09-22 16:12:35 UTC

Fair enough.

I will go back and file a separate bug against the documentation.

But many of the utilities I use, perhaps they aren't strictly "user", but I
have a few physical tools in my pockets which I use to fix things.  Also,
instead of writing something which might require complex or obscure code which
might be updated, it is easier to use the parallel utilities, e.g. use l2ping
(with sudo) and rfcomm in bluez-utils instead of coding it directly - and I
don't remember but I think some of the libraries I need for Python or C to
access these might be Red-Pill too.

I will also see if I can write an auxiliary package manager which could
parallel and restore the rest.  I've had to do it on my main linux systems a
few times with multiple upgrades and installs to Ubuntu so have been looking
into it anyway.

Thanks and sorry for being so dense.

Comment 7 Andre Klapper maemo.org

2009-10-01 16:42:20 UTC

Well, again Red Pill is something that should not be pushed or featured. Nokia
is even considering removing it entirely. Hence this is a WONTFIX.
Solution is to use proper categories and to use official extras-* repositories.

Comment 8 tz (reporter) 2009-10-01 19:34:08 UTC

Correction - solution is to duplicate things elsewhere in the repository in
extras-* but re-mark them as user so they will both show up and be restored.

That is what I have been doing.