On Mon, Jun 24, 2002 at 04:18:42PM -0500, Steve Greenland wrote:
> Wrong. Regardless of your opinion of other people's administration
> procedures, if you overwrite a user modified file under /etc/ without
> asking you are in violation of policy, and it is basically unacceptable.
Is there some reason why this has to be discussed as "You are violating
policy, therefore you are evil and irresponsible, and you must rectify
your behaviour immediately", rather than "Your package behaves badly <in
this situation>, and might be improved by something like <this>. What
do you think?"
Personally, I strongly object to the thought that "violating policy" is
"basically unacceptable" in and of itself. (I'd expect this should be
clear from previous messages on the subject)
> I'll offer one exception: if the file is very clearly marked as being
> overwritable, and is offers a clear, easy way to remove the possibility
> of being automatically modified, then I think that's a generally accepted
> procedure:
> # I_BELONG_TO_DEBCONF
> # This file is currently being re-generated from the answers stored in
> # debconf. If you modify this file directly, your changes will be
> # overwritten unless you remove the line containing I_BELONG_TO_DEBCONF.
Another possibility would be have the /etc/foo file linked to
/var/debconf/managed-config/etc-foo, or so on the initial install. If
the user wants to ensure config files aren't managed by debconf, it's
then a simple matter of replacing the symlink by a real file. Upgrades
could then mess with /var/debconf/managed-config/* as much as they like.
Cheers,
aj
--
Anthony Towns <aj@humbug.org.au> <http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/>
I don't speak for anyone save myself. GPG signed mail preferred.
``BAM! Science triumphs again!''
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