Well that's what I did of course.

But smxi then downloads auxiliary scripts into /usr/local/bin (as opposed to, say, /tmp, or its installation directory)! And there isn't even an uninstall script. This is quite ugly from a sysadmin perspective.
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Well,
I disagree.
Isn't /usr/loca/l the place where such programs/sripts should go to?
I am storing my own little system-scripts exactly for this reason also there..
And speaking of "flooding", currently I have there less than 20 files which seem to be related to smxi somehow. Flooding looks different.

my 2 cents on this.

regards

Reiner
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Well, here's my 50 cents:

/usr/local/bin (and sbin) is a place for the SITE ADMINISTRATOR's (i.e. your own) scripts, not a dumping ground for lazy packagers. Imagine if 10 little packages tried to get away with polluting /usr/local/bin with 20 scripts each!

The next sysadmin who comes along may not know about smxi, and will have to wonder whether he can remove those 20 scripts or not.

The proper solutions are:

1) normal packages come as .deb's, and can be removed completely (including their auxiliary scripts) via apt-get or dpkg. It's not that hard to debianize a package, especially when you're targeting a Debian-only audience.

2) packages not under dpkg control should work from under /opt/packagename, for easy removal.

Anything else is pollution, as it cannot be easily tied to a source package, removed or upgraded. A script that MOVES ITSELF to /usr/local/bin, then dumps even more "goodies" there, is not just annoying, but positively offensive.

But I don't really care. I just wanted the latest 2.6.39 kernel. The rest was just a suggestion to the smxi author; apparently he was offended by the voice of reason, so he decided to withhold the kernel URL -- in order to punish me for daring to criticize his improper packaging.

Mind you, I am not speculating about this or second-guessing anyone -- techAdmin actually admitted (read above) that he would have posted the URL had I phrased my post differently.
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hmm,
the use of /usr/local or /opt is more or less free and questionablel. I have seen other discussions on this issue which finally leaded to nowhere.

smxi doesin't come as an .deb currently as, as far as I know, it is not restricted to debian-based distros only.

And with the current "pollution" I donot see a problem yet.
If this however increases very much I trust h2 and the people involved will take some action to overcome/solve that. as it would increase to an non-maintainable status then.

But as I already mentioned , currently I donot see an real issue in there.

regards

Reiner
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reiner, smxi has a static number of files, and the smxi self clean up function, see -h, cleans up all known files. Any cruft left over after running that is a simple bug, solved by filing a simple bug report, with the file name or names. Then the bug is resolved, and we go on, happily, sadly, ideally in whatever shape we were in before filing the issue report.

So as with other 'issues' and 'concerns'' raised by people who contribute nothing except whining and complaining, this is a non starter.

I didn't bother wasting my time reading any of the 'responses' from this poster by the way, there's no need to, he contributes nothing and I'm not interested in his complaints, I've seen this type of cr#p before and sad to say, I'll see it again.

I learned long ago that one out of a thousand or so users of any distro or app is going to b##ch and whine and then explain why things have to be the way they want, even if they are the first person to ever even mention that need or desire or anal geek obsession with x or y. That's just how it is, the best thing to do is to just ignore them, and thank our lucky stars that something in our work made them unhappy and leave.

There's far too many serious losers in the free software world, but that's what happens when the reciprocity cycle of genuine gifting cultures is bypassed by web anonymity. Americans are especially prone to this disease. If you spend some time reflecting on what really makes the cycle of gift reciprocity work in almost all cultures I think one of the major weak spots of free and open source software comes to light. Traditionally a gift binds together, creates connection, builds community, builds ties, and in that, acts roughly as the opposite to warfare, which separates, splits apart, destroys. Also an important function, but gifting is the key. When you remove the reciprocal nature of this gift cycle, you start getting into some damaging areas, unhealthy.

Now to be cleaner, yeah, if I was motivated by someone's energy or financial donations, I might create an smxi folder in /user/local/bin, but that would just make some other geek obsessive whine about something else, so why bother, this has worked fine as is for years now, hundreds of thousands of uses, thousands of users, no complaints on this issue, so why even think about a single one that appears out of the woodwork, contributing again, nothing, except complaints? Life is too short, don't get caught up in this juvenile part of the foss world. Remember also, you have no idea when a person is just a stupid kid using the internet to pretend they are mature and adult, I've seen that happen far to often to get caught in that web again. Lots of asbergers out there too, lots of people with no lives fretting over x number of files in /usr/local/bin, don't be part of that sad world, work on real problems.

Also of course worth considering is the preamble to all gpl licenses:



A lot of people think those are just words, they are not, they provide a key protection against the fundamentally one sided nature of the gift giving process that is free software, ie, between creator/producer and consumer, who can and often does do nothing in any way shape or form other than expect to get more for free, then complain when it's not the way they want it.

The other thing these parasites do is waste all our time. That's because they have no clue about what is being offered in the first place, or why. And they certainly offer nothing in return.

I like to make it quite clear and unambiguous that I am not interested in dealing with such types, who always of course consider themselves vastly more important than they are in actuality, ie, they believe their views, as non contributors in any positive way, matter.
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