Talk about STUPID dependencies.
Not really.
Maybe not STUPID, but stupidly annoying sometimes. It would be really nice if a dependency could be flagged as *essential* or *optional*. If you check the Advanced button on the Yast NTP Client module, you will see the capability to configure the firewall (not at all uncommon in
Dylan wrote: that situation). That would make the Yast Firewall Module a dependency. It would also be logical that that would have a dependency on SuSEfirewall2. NOTE: The dependencies are logical, as far as having them available since they are a part of the NTP Client configuration features. There is no compulsion to run a firewall if you so desire not to.
For example, in a network with no Windows boxes, it narks me a bit to have samba installed because some networking package supports it, but would otherwise function completely without it.
With the size of hard drives these days, you are only losing a little bit of space to have them installed. Installed does not mean you have to use them.
But if I DON'T install the firewall packages I can't run the ntp client nor the http-server client.
I believe you could run them, just not configure them through their Yast modules.
You CAN run both without the firewall, or the yast firewall module installed, but yast will complain about dependencies every time you run the install/remove module.
And rightly so, as explained above. But having them installed doesn't mean you have to use them. To not have the dependency would mean to lose that config feature in the module. SuSE obviously thought it was best to have the feature to also configure the firewall for those who do use one, which I think was a good choice. If you did run a firewall, it would be a nice to also open those ports on the firewall so your http server could be reached, or so your ntp client could sync. You could always hand edit those configs and not install the Yast modules or the firewall, but that would take away the ease of the Yast config. So that is the choice. -- Joe Morris New Tribes Mission Email Address: Joe_Morris@ntm.org Registered Linux user 231871