Bug 307714

Summary:	software manager: provide option to control order of download/install to make aborting more safer
Product:	[openSUSE] openSUSE 10.2	Reporter:	macias - <bluedzins>
Component:	YaST2	Assignee:	Ladislav Slezák <lslezak>
Status:	RESOLVED WONTFIX	QA Contact:	Jiri Srain <jsrain>
Severity:	Enhancement
Priority:	P5 - None
Version:	Final
Target Milestone:	---
Hardware:	i586
OS:	Other
Whiteboard:
Found By:	---	Services Priority:
Business Priority:		Blocker:	---
Marketing QA Status:	---	IT Deployment:	---

Description macias - 2007-09-05 11:15:43 UTC

This wish-report is "inspired" by last installation I did: https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=307364 .

Please provide such emergency abort modes (user would choose them):
* emergency abort -- installed packages remains, the rest of the packages will be skipped, if there is a package downloaded skip it, if it is installed install it
* emergency rollback -- skip the rest of the packages, rollback all changes from current installation process

I think all opensuse users would feel more secure with such options to choose from.

Btw. I think that those mode would be easier to implement if the behaviour of SM installation would be change -- instead of:
download A, install A, download B, install B, download C...
use
download A, B, C...Z, install A,B, C, ...Z

it is much easier to abort such sequence not mentioning implementing a rollback.

Comment 1 Ladislav Slezák 2007-09-07 12:40:09 UTC

Emergency abort - it's already there, just press the Abort button. After confirming the abort yast exits.

Emergency rollback - that would be a nice feature, but it's (almost) impossible to implement it. Yast would need to rollback _any_ change in _any_ file on the system (or even remote, if root is a network filesystem (NFS) or a network device (iSCSI)). The problem is that the system is modified not only by the files from RPM packages (that would be quite easy), but also by post/pre/un/-install scripts. It's very hard to revert the changes back.

If you really need such feature, then use LVM, it's supports filesystem snapshots...

I don't think that the changed installation order could help in any way, it would only increase required disk space for installation.

Comment 2 macias - 2007-09-07 14:03:03 UTC

Ladislav, thank you very much for the explanation. Pity it is not possible due to technical limitations, from the user perspective it would be very useful.

> I don't think that the changed installation order could help in any way, it
> would only increase required disk space for installation.

I am wondering, what do you think -- would it be possible to add an option in SM settings to control this. I mean -- for me it is "cheaper" to download those ~150MB (average) at once, and then install them, because it is not problem for me to have such free space. However downloading even half of that takes for me an hour. And in general -- I don't think 100MB is a problem nowadays to store, ok, it could be, but as I said, it would be an option for it.
So by such simple reordering user would get "almost" rollback feature.

I think it is worth a thought.

If it is really invalid, please close it.

For me, it has advantages:
* semi-rollback
* abort would be much safer (it takes longer to download package, than install it, so it is unlikely that somebody would want to kill SM in installation phase, and in download it is 100% safe)
* possible to take advantage of this design to provide other features (reported) as remembering downloaded packages, it would be solved by design, no  extra stuff
* better handling of errors during downloads -- see rollback

Disadvantage:
* one option more

Comment 3 Lukas Ocilka 2007-09-10 14:13:37 UTC

It's worth reconsidering after 10.3 but we can't have it in 10.3 so closing as LATER for now.

Comment 4 Stephan Kulow 2008-06-25 09:20:11 UTC

mass reopening all 10.2 LATER+REMIND bugs.

Comment 5 Stephan Kulow 2008-06-25 09:24:27 UTC

close all 10.2 LATER/REMIND bugs as WONTFIX. Reopen yourself if you still plan to work on it.