Bug#527641: Package installation overwrites /etc/default/console-setup without warning
Package: console-setup
Version: 1.34
Severity: serious
Justification: Policy 10.7.3
My last upgrade of 'console-setup' caused /etc/default/console-setup to
be overwritten without warning. The contents of the file before being
overwritten were :
# A configuration file for setupcon
# Change to "yes" and setupcon will explain what is being doing
VERBOSE_OUTPUT=no
# Setup these consoles. Most people do not need to change this.
ACTIVE_CONSOLES="/dev/tty[1-6]"
# Put here your encoding. Valid charmaps are: UTF-8 ARMSCII-8 CP1251
# CP1255 CP1256 GEORGIAN-ACADEMY GEORGIAN-PS IBM1133 ISIRI-3342
# ISO-8859-1 ISO-8859-2 ISO-8859-3 ISO-8859-4 ISO-8859-5 ISO-8859-6
# ISO-8859-7 ISO-8859-8 ISO-8859-9 ISO-8859-10 ISO-8859-11 ISO-8859-13
# ISO-8859-14 ISO-8859-15 ISO-8859-16 KOI8-R KOI8-U TIS-620 VISCII
CHARMAP="UTF-8"
# The codeset determines which symbols are supported by the font.
# Valid codesets are: Arabic Armenian CyrAsia CyrKoi CyrSlav Ethiopian
# Georgian Greek Hebrew Lao Lat15 Lat2 Lat38 Lat7 Thai Uni1 Uni2 Uni3
# Vietnamese. Read README.fonts for explanation.
CODESET="Lat15"
# Valid font faces are: VGA (sizes 8, 14 and 16), Terminus (sizes
# 12x6, 14, 16, 20x10, 24x12, 28x14 and 32x16), TerminusBold (sizes
# 14, 16, 20x10, 24x12, 28x14 and 32x16), TerminusBoldVGA (sizes 14
# and 16), Fixed (sizes 13, 14, 15, 16 and 18), Goha (sizes 12, 14 and
# 16), GohaClassic (sizes 12, 14 and 16).
FONTFACE=
FONTSIZE=
# You can also directly specify nonstandard font and ACM to load.
# Use space as separator if you want to load more than one font.
# FONT='lat9w-08.psf.gz /usr/local/share/brailefonts/brl-08.psf'
# ACM=/usr/local/share/consoletrans/my_special_encoding.acm
# The following variables describe your keyboard and can have the same
# values as the XkbModel, XkbLayout, XkbVariant and XkbOptions options
# in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.
XKBMODEL="pc104"
XKBLAYOUT="us"
XKBVARIANT=""
XKBOPTIONS=""
After installing the update, my edited version of the file was lost and
the default file from the package had been written in its place. I have
since manually restored my preferred settings, but a 'diff' between the
package's default file and my preferred settings looks like this:
27,28c27,28
< FONTFACE="Fixed"
< FONTSIZE="16"
---
> FONTFACE=
> FONTSIZE=
Also please note that recent changes to 'console-setup' were made on my
behalf, and the current bug may well be related to loose strings
regarding those changes. I carried out experimentation last year with
many things, two of which were: building custom kernels, and configuring
my virtual terminals to my own liking. In the course of those
experiments, I discovered that the kernel font called "10x18" provided a
balance of readability with maximizing the amount of information that
could be fit on one screen. At that time, I discovered that another
package, 'console-tools', was replacing the kernel font with software
fonts once the Debian boot scripts were run. However, the
'console-tools' configuration allowed for settings which would prevent
the software font from being loaded -- allowing me to use the desired
kernel font.
The recent changes to 'xserver-xorg' brought in the 'console-setup'
package as a new dependency. I found that 'console-setup' was loading
software fonts at boot time, and found no mechanism for allowing the
kernel font to be left in place.
I assumed that this was not a bug, and posted a question to
debian-boot@lists.debian.org asking whether 'console-setup' had a
mechanism that would allow me to continue using the kernel font on my
virtual terminals. Colin Watson responded by creating a patch for me to
test which would allow the behavior seen with 'console-tools': leaving
FONTFACE and FONTSIZE undefined in /etc/default/console-setup would
prevent a software font from being loaded by 'setupcon', and the kernel
font would be left in place.
I was running with the patched 'setupcon' on my system when the update
of 'console-setup' appeared. At the next reboot, I found that my
changes to /etc/default/console-setup were gone.
I have set the severity of this bug report to "serious" because,
technically, it is a policy violation to overwrite user changes to file
in /etc; feel free to lower the severity if you folks want to put this
bug on the back burner -- since it's not exactly a pressing matter. My
concern, in setting this bug to "serious," is that other folks might
also have their changes overwritten (if they make any).
Please note that some of the debconf output displayed below is
misleading. For example, these particular settings,
console-setup/fontsize-text: 16
[...]
console-setup/fontsize: 16
[...]
console-setup/fontsize-fb: 16
make no sense given that my virtual terminal font is actually 10x18,
instead of something typical like 8x16. Clearly these values are not
from my config file (see above).
Thanks,
Dave W.
-- System Information:
Debian Release: squeeze/sid
APT prefers unstable
APT policy: (990, 'unstable'), (350, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Kernel: Linux 2.6.28-2s13145.090321.desktop.uvesafb (SMP w/2 CPU cores; PREEMPT)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Versions of packages console-setup depends on:
ii console-terminus 4.28-1 Fixed-width fonts for fast reading
ii debconf [debconf-2.0] 1.5.26 Debian configuration management sy
ii xkb-data 1.5-2 X Keyboard Extension (XKB) configu
Versions of packages console-setup recommends:
ii console-tools 1:0.2.3dbs-65.1 Linux console and font utilities
Versions of packages console-setup suggests:
ii locales 2.9-11 GNU C Library: National Language (
ii lsb-base 3.2-22 Linux Standard Base 3.2 init scrip
-- debconf information:
console-setup/variant: USA
console-setup/unsupported_options: true
console-setup/fontsize-text: 16
console-setup/compose: No compose key
console-setup/modelcode: pc104
console-setup/switch: No temporary switch
console-setup/unsupported_config_layout: true
console-setup/fontsize: 16
console-setup/unsupported_layout: true
console-setup/charmap: UTF-8
console-setup/layoutcode: us
console-setup/optionscode:
debian-installer/console-setup/title:
console-setup/unsupported_config_options: true
console-setup/layout: USA
console-setup/variantcode:
console-setup/codesetcode: Lat15
console-setup/altgr: No AltGr key
console-setup/ttys: /dev/tty[1-6]
console-setup/model: Generic 104-key PC
console-setup/fontsize-fb: 16
console-setup/codeset: # Latin1 and Latin5 - western Europe and Turkic languages
console-setup/toggle: No toggling
console-setup/fontface: Fixed
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