[Server-devel] Fwd: Anaconda does not clear /var/lock/subsys - service $svc condrestart start services

[Jeremy Katz]

On Wednesday, March 18 2009, Martin Langhoff said:
> In the course of diagnosing a strange problem that seems to happen
> only on some anaconda-driven upgrades, I found that -- unlike the
> normal boot process -- there is nothing in anaconda that clears
> /var/lock/subsys.

It's not anything that's ever really been requested.  

[snip]
> This may sound weird -- don't you expect a clean shutdown before an
> upgrade? -- but in OLPC School Servers in the field get quite a bit of
> rough handling. The ones I work with sure get most of their poweroffs
> via the "powercable yanking" scheme, so I get to see these problems
> here before they happen in the field.
> 
> IOWs reliability in the face of strange conditions _is_ desirable, and
> important.
> 
>  - Is this known, or fixed?
>  - Is there a reasonable workaround? kickstart is not used for
> upgrades, even if it was, %pre happens to early, %post happens too
> late.
> 
> Would the right place to clear (or complain about!) /var/lock/subsys
> would be upgrade.py: upgradeMountFilesystems()?

We definitely tend to expect that you've shut down cleanly and there are
a few other things that could trip up if you haven't.  But that's where
we'd want it.  And if you want to throw together a patch, I'm all for
applying it.  Just a heads-up that there may be other dragons lurking :)

Jeremy