Bug#235976: apache: Apache overwrites local configuration

[Allard Hoeve <allard@byte.nl>]

Package: apache
Version: 1.3.29.0.1-5
Severity: important

Hello All,

Whenever apache gets installed, reinstalled, upgraded or reconfigured, it overwrites my configuration in /etc/apache.

Perhaps my setup is a bit exotic, so I will explain the situation:

I have several Apache servers that have mostly identical configurations. To reduce redundancy, we placed the configuration
files on an NFS share. The local directory /etc/apache/ now contains a local.conf that contains any configuration directives
that should remain local and a symlink from /etc/shared/apache/httpd.conf to /etc/apache/httpd.conf. The shared
configuration file includes the local.conf file and all is well.

That is, all is well until the apache postinst scripts get called.

Through some magic, the symlink in /etc/apache gets removed and replaced by a new httpd.conf plaintext file that contains
the exact content as my /etc/shared/apache/httpd.conf. Needless to say: this is bad news for me. Changes made in the central
httpd.conf are no longer propagated to all servers.


One example of code, possibly responsible for removing the symbolic link, is from postinst.common:

    if [ ! "`grep "^PidFile /var/run/$pkg.pid" /etc/$pkg/httpd.conf`" ] ; then
        cat /etc/$pkg/httpd.conf |  perl -pe \
        "s,^PidFile.*,PidFile /var/run/$pkg.pid,;" > /etc/$pkg/httpd.conf.dpkg-inst.$$
        mv /etc/$pkg/httpd.conf.dpkg-inst.$$ /etc/$pkg/httpd.conf
    fi


This raises two questions:

a) Should the apache postinst scripts overwrite a configuration file
   with a new file with identical content?
b) Should the apache postinst scripts remove a symlink and replace it
   with a plaintext file?


I think that according to section 10.7.3 of the Debian Policy Manual, a) could be argued for but b) can not.

I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts about this.



Sincerely,

Allard Hoeve



-- System Information:
Debian Release: testing/unstable
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Kernel: Linux 2.4.25
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C

Versions of packages apache depends on:
ii  apache-common             1.3.29.0.1-5 Support files for all Apache webse
ii  debconf                   1.4.11       Debian configuration management sy
ii  dpkg                      1.10.18      Package maintenance system for Deb
ii  libc6                     2.3.2.ds1-11 GNU C Library: Shared libraries an
ii  libdb4.2                  4.2.52-8     Berkeley v4.2 Database Libraries [
ii  libexpat1                 1.95.6-6     XML parsing C library - runtime li
ii  libmagic1                 4.07-2       File type determination library us
ii  libpam0g                  0.76-15      Pluggable Authentication Modules l
ii  logrotate                 3.6.5-2      Log rotation utility
ii  mime-support              3.25-1       MIME files 'mime.types' & 'mailcap
ii  perl [perl5]              5.8.3-2      Larry Wall's Practical Extraction