On 31 Dec 2001, Thomas Bushnell, BSG wrote: > Santiago Vila <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > If only the location but not the contents of the files changed from > > potato to woody, you can use the prerm to copy/move the files to the > > new location before dpkg realizes they didn't previously exist. > > > > If both the location and the contents changed you can keep a small > > database of md5sums to decide whether or not to put the new files > > in place in the prerm before dpkg prompts. > > Neither changed. All that changed was whether the files were marked > as conffiles.
Are you sure? dpkg does not prompt in such case. To be sure, I created a dummy package foo_1 containing a single file /etc/hello. Additionally, foo_2 has /etc/hello as a conffile. Upgrading foo from 1 to 2 does not make dpkg to prompt. It does prompt if I manually change /etc/hello before upgrading to foo_2. It does also prompt if the version of /etc/hello inside the .deb changed from foo_1 to foo_2. However in this case it does not prompt if I manually change /etc/hello by the version inside foo_2.deb before upgrading to foo_2. I think this is what happens in your case. You can avoid the prompt by writing a prerm which replaces /etc/hello by the version in foo_2 if it happens to be identical to the version inside foo_1.deb.
