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Bug#1078721: iproute2: removing /sbin/ip link breaks other packages and possibly user scripts

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Colin Watson <cjwatson@debian.org> writes:

> On Thu, Aug 15, 2024 at 11:14:41PM +0530, Nilesh Patra wrote:
>> On Thu, Aug 15, 2024 at 12:30:22PM -0500, G. Branden Robinson wrote:
>> > At 2024-08-15T13:20:02-0400, Michael Stone wrote:
>> > > It's just so depressing that this is how debian works now. We used to
>> > > try to not break things, now the answer is "you should have read the
>> > > NEWS, and known that unrelated packages were going to break, and
>> > > reconfigured standard debian network tools to add non-default
>> > > timeouts". All because the aesthetic preference for not having the
>> > > same binary appear in two different paths is a higher priority than
>> > > keeping systems working.
>> > 
>> > "Move fast and break as much stuff as possible, or Debian will be doomed
>> > to irrelevance.  I'll be SABDFL someday!"
>> > 
>> > The creed of the _impactful_ developer.
>> 
>> It looks like a pretty pointless change - breaks several scripts for example.
>> It was/is common to assume /sbin/ip to be present and usable.
>> Michael's bug report does make sense to me. Such a change is even causing
>> systems to not bootup.
>
> On 2024-07-14 (five days before the iproute2 change was made), there was
> this conversation on #debian-devel:
>
>   19:14 <petn-randall> Is there a reason why iproute2 ships a symlink
>   from /sbin/ip to /bin/ip? I've looked into the packaging repo and it
>   seems to predate the git log.
>   ...
>   19:52 <cjwatson> petn-randall:
>   https://codesearch.debian.net/search?q=%2Fsbin%2Fip%5Cb&literal=0 has
>   a pretty non-trivial list of things that would need fixed before
>   removing that (and of course some false positives)
>
> I realize it wasn't petn-randall who made this change, but it seems a
> big coincidence that the symlink was dropped a few days after this IRC
> conversation; and yet it seems nobody bothered to do the most basic due
> diligence that I pointed out here, which is kind of sad.  (I fixed
> wireless-tools after this change caused an RC bug there.)

I think it probably was just a coincidence, since it looks like the
change was made in order to fix #1064795 which was reported on
25 Feb 2024.

Luka, how about temporarily reverting this change to give people a
chance to prepare for it?

BTW I'm not directly affected by this AFAIK, so I'm not asking for me.

It just strikes me as obvious that removing any long-standing binary
path in Debian is pretty-much bound to break someone's system, and if
you want to do that you really ought to at least check, and preferably
try to work out a way of warning them about it, or fixing the breakage
first.

I note that neither the Changelog nor the NEWS file mentioned this as a
breaking change or issued anything like a warning about it.

  https://salsa.debian.org/kernel-team/iproute2/-/commit/c4bb148dd4ed0601ca32ee8a458007d0c348d6c3

Cheers, Phil.
-- 
Philip Hands -- https://hands.com/~phil

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Bug#1078721: iproute2: removing /sbin/ip link breaks other packages and possibly user scripts Michael Stone <mstone@debian.org> - 2024-08-15 19:30 +0200
  Bug#1078721: iproute2: removing /sbin/ip link breaks other packages and possibly user scripts Philip Hands <phil@hands.com> - 2024-08-16 17:40 +0200
    Bug#1078721: iproute2: removing /sbin/ip link breaks other packages and possibly user scripts Colin Watson <cjwatson@debian.org> - 2024-08-16 18:00 +0200
      Bug#1078721: iproute2: removing /sbin/ip link breaks other packages and possibly user scripts Michael Stone <mstone@debian.org> - 2024-08-16 22:40 +0200

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