On Tue, 7 Apr 1998, Philip Hands wrote: > > No, this script should not be a conffile. Any customisation, such as fax > > ports, should be read from a configuration file somewhere under /etc. If a > > script in /usr/bin requires customisation by the sysadmin, this is a bug > > in the script. > > Absolutely, If you _have_ to edit the file for the package to work, that's > a bug. > > So let's say there is such a package, and we fix the bug (so you no longer > need to edit a /usr/bin/ script on Debian systems). > > This does not change the fact that the normal way of configuring that package > (on all OS's except Debian) is to edit the script file. This means that some > sysadmins in mixed environments, will do just that. > > Should we slap their wrists (by destroying their configuration every upgrade) > or should we react to this state of affairs, and add the script to the > package's conffiles ?
IMO, there should be a big warning (probably in capitals) at the top of the script. The sysadmin should be advised to edit the file in /etc and to leave the script like it is. The script will anyhow be different from the upstream version (because it reads a config file), so it shouldn't be too much hassle to add the warning. > Please explain the downside of listing a non-configuration file as a conffile. I don't know the downside of conffiles that aren't configuration files, but a sysadmin is expected to know that dpkg will happily overwrite any file under /usr when upgrading a package. This behaviour will not change, because it is very impractical to make every file in the packaging system a conffile (think about calculating an md5sum for every file in a package on a slow system). > I'm not saying this should be a recommended approach, but if we find that the > users of a particular package keep complaining that they got screwed by an > upgrade because of a situation like this, we should have the option of making > a non-cofiguration file a conffile. No, IMO then a warning should be added to the script saying that the users should edit the config file in /etc instead. Remco -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
