postgresql-common breaks logrotate

On Fri, Dec 27, 2013 at 12:11 AM, Steve Crawford <
scrawford@pinpointresearch.com> wrote:

People who have attempted to install PGDG versions of PostgreSQL on recent
Ubuntu releases have run into the cascading problem of postgresql wanting
to destroy Ubuntu.

Based on the packaging:
postgresql depends on postgresql-common
postgresql-common breaks logrotate (>3.8)
ubuntu-standard depends on logrotate
profit?...

It appears the reason for the claimed breakage is a very slight update to
logrotate that requires one to tell logrotate about files/directories with
non-"standard" ownership/permissions. Getting logrotate to stop complaining
is trivially resolved by the user by adding a single "su" directive to the
/etc/logrotate.d/postgresql-common or by having PostgreSQL log to syslog.

It seems that "breaks" is overkill and the hassle imposed by that
declaration far exceeds any benefit therefrom

This is a known issue documented in the FAQ:
http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Apt/FAQ#I_am_using_a_non-LTS_release_of_Ubuntu

The apt repository only really provides packages for LTS versions - it just
usually happens to work on other releases as well. I believe the concern
here is not to risk breaking things for the LTS users - we don't want to
change the logging defaults in a minor patch upgrade.

That said, hopefully it'll get fixed at least by the next release, since
that's going to be another LTS. There's been talk about changing the way
the logging is done in the debian packages in general, that might also be
part of the solution.

--
Magnus Hagander
Me: http://www.hagander.net/
Work: http://www.redpill-linpro.com/