Joel Roth wrote: > I think the second scenario may be saying to change the > group of the altered config files, so the package manager > will know not to overwrite them during an upgrade.
no it does not say that - it says the "group" of packages meaning not the user group. I think what they mean is create a patch (that modifies) the config files, but I also do not understand completely what is meant. However almost all debian programs support config.d style which can be used to customize the configuration without touching the main configuration file. IMO this is the preferred way regards
