[wpkg-users] Blacklist package(s)

[Rainer Meier]

Hi Vladimir,

Vladimír Pšenička wrote:
> Is it any option to blacklist package(s) based on hostname in default
> profile (or any other profile)?

No.
Profiles should either include a package or not. If a host should not 
receive one of the packages, then it should not be referenced in the 
profile.

Having single nodes with some "exceptions" would be extremely difficult 
to handle (not to say impossible to handle properly) - especially when 
it comes to package dependencies, includes and chained installations.


> Example:
> 
> I have default profile (about 20 packages), which apply on all machines,
> but I found one package (by install) to hang some workstation(s) (BSOD
> etc.). Before I resolve this, it is good have option to temporary
> disable this package for specific host(s)
> 
> Exaple of hosts.xml:
> 
> <host name=".+" profile-id="default" />
> <host name="machine01" blacklist-package-id="winxpsp3" />
> 
> What do you think about this?

Host definitions are there to assign profiles to hosts - not packages. 
We could theoretically imagine to "exclude" all packages from another 
profile from the assigned one. However I really do not recommend it. 
Especially it will get very hard to trace which packages will be 
excluded then and which ones still apply. Just think about conditions 
where various packages depend on each other and you start to blacklist 
some of them.

So I would rather prefer to do it the other way around - just create 
consistent and working profiles. I am usually doing such things as follows:

<host name="machine01" profile-id="basic" />
This profile contains then all packages which work on all machines.
In addition I have a host definition as follows for

<host name=".+" profile-id="default" />
The default profile _extends_ the basic profile and adds some more packages.

For example:

<profiles>
     <profile id="basic">
         <package package-id="firefox" />
         <package package-id="thunderbird" />
         ...
     </profile>

     <profile id="default">
         <depends profile-id="default" />
         <package package-id="packageX" />
     </profile>
</profiles>

If you find another package not to work on a specific node than it has 
to be removed from the basic package. Admins can do such re-structuring 
at any time since WPKG does not care from which profile the package has 
been included. So if the host matches another profile but the packages 
are the same nothing will change for the host.

So I would strongly recommend keeping the profiles clean and working for 
each machine instead of assigning non-applying packages to a host and 
then starting to blacklist them since I think the results will be 
untraceable.

br,
Rainer