2012/12/8
disgusting linux package installation issues
Was installing a package on Linux and ran into huge problems.
First, the package — let’s call it ‘somecrap’ — contained a post-installation configuration. Linux has this terminal pseudo-GUI used sometimes for configuration of packages. You may have seen it, it looks like ASCII art. Unfortunately it’s so brittle that when you Ctrl-Z out of it there is no way to get it back. So I had to just Ctrl-C out of it. Turns out the process that runs it (‘whiptail’) is stuck using 100% of CPU. So that’s fine, it too can be killed, but how to get a configuration do-over? The package thinks it’s already configured — and indeed, wrote out a default configuration file. There is no way to get a redo short of removing and reinstalling the package. Right? And that’s where the real problem starts.
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