On 11-Apr-99, 10:29 (CDT), Christian Hammers <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi ! > > I wonder what should be deleted when purging ? > a) only the config files > b) config files and empty directories > c) every directory INCLUDING files that the user may have installed > (since without the package those files are useless) > d) config files and empty config-directores and non-config-directories > even if they include users' data.
My theory is that a package should not delete anything it doesn't own. Ever. A package owns its files (i.e. all the stuff in /usr/bin, /usr/man, etc.). Dpkg will delete these during --remove. A package owns its config files, whether or not they are marked as dpkg conffiles or not. For example, /etc/cern-httpd is not a conffile (because it is created by a script), but is a config file, and therefore should be deleted by 'dpkg --purge'. A package *may* own its log files, assuming that it is the only thing logging to those files. I think these should also be removed by --purge. A package owns files it creates. A package owns its custom directories (/etc/foo), and could delete it *if it is empty* (although I think dpkg ought to do this, but I'm not sure if does). If it's not empty, then it shouldn't delete it, because of: A package should never ever erase any other files. > I ask because a user of the wwwoffle package I maintain complained that > it has deleted his private.html which was installed in /etc/wwwoffle. I agree with the user. > This is correct. My script does a "rm -rf". But what about the huge > amount of data in /var/spool/wwwoffle ? Should I left that data ? > It is not installed by the package... Is it generated by the package? Or by the user? Consider the difference between removing stuff under /var/catman and /usr/man. The basic concept (I think) is that a package should delete something that the user created, even if it is under directories that are owned by the package. Steve
