Important alerts ... email distribution

[ludolph]

There are two separate problems:

- One thing is how to solve problem like this, but I am afraid, that there not will be any fully general list of steps, because each separate problem can be a little bit different.

- Second thing is what is the suitable way how to inform community that any kind of "serious" problem occured and how to solve it or what actions are temporarly not recommended (upgrade in this case, for example).

MX Forum is, of course, best place for detailed information and discussions, but majority of users does not read MX Forum daily or more often. And these users are in danger. For all these people, something like email Alert would be very , very ... helpful!

[richb]

Sorry not practical to email over 6200 Forum members,

[sunrat]

siduction has an Upgrade Warnings subforum which all users are advised to read before upgrading. In over 10 years of using that distro, I've only struck trouble a couple of times which wasn't forewarned there, and several times have waited weeks before getting the all clear because of some major transition. This is to be expected in a distro based on Debian unstable, but maybe MX could do similar.
That said, in 5 years of using MX, this is the very first time a problem like this has occurred. MX is generally very reliable including with upgrades.

[richb]

Something we will consider. Thanks.

[asqwerth]

siduction has an Upgrade Warnings subforum which all users are advised to read before upgrading. In over 10 years of using that distro, I've only struck trouble a couple of times which wasn't forewarned there, and several times have waited weeks before getting the all clear because of some major transition. This is to be expected in a distro based on Debian unstable, but maybe MX could do similar.
That said, in 5 years of using MX, this is the very first time a problem like this has occurred. MX is generally very reliable including with upgrades.

Most rolling distros will have something similar to the Upgrade Warnings subforum.

However, I can also see where ludolph is coming from. One would not normally expect that users of distros based on Debian Stable will need to check the board for warnings before upgrading.

Like I said, the MX team will need to think things through.

[j2mcgreg]

Rather than using email could the message function of the apt notifier be used instead? Rather than pumping out a message that says how many upgrades are available, could it produce a message like "Critical Event -- consult MX Forum immediately!"

[ChrisUK]

Or... off the top of my head (which will probably mean I've not thought it through)

Couldn't you set a boolean flag in the main repo (maybe just read it from a text file), say ok-to-upgrade - then the Update Notifier checks the flag before any upgrades are even offered... then display a message etc.

So, a bad update - dev sets flag to false - sets to true when fixed etc

[KBD]

Email would be just as useless. Not everyone would check their email before running updates. Not much better to expect people to visit the forum before every update, and kind of scary to tell them you expect them to do so, ruins confidence in the distro.

My suggestion would be to shut down the repositories altogether until a fix comes through so they don't even see an update notification. Or otherwise send a warning through the update notification itself. Pull the update key, do something to prevent updates.

[sg-1]

I share KBD's post when he suggests closing the repositories by inhibiting any updates until the problem is resolved, informing users of course.

[Jerry3904]

That kernel update has been removed, and will disappear as soon as the repo being used syncs up.