Re: conflicting conffiles (was: Name for configuration packages)
On Sun, 2003-02-16 at 11:40, Marc Haber wrote:
> This raises an interesting issue. Just assume that two packages use
> the same file name as a conffile. This is a conflict that looks like
> it cannot be resolved for dpkg and apt, since declaring the two
> packages conflicting will only remove, and not purge the "old"
> package.
What happens is that the package installed second becomes
the owner of the conffile. Therefore it is not deleted when
the first package is purged.
> Is there a mechanism in place for this? Is it possible to declare two
> packages conflicting in a way that foo can only be installed after bar
> has not only been uninstalled, but actually purged?
Not that I'm aware of, but perhaps someone else has ideas.
This situation can be problem since the repossession of the
conffiles occurs silently. See #163183.
Furthermore, there are reports that dpkg has a bug such that
it sometimes fails to remove the name of the conffile from the
first package's list of conffiles; thus when the first package is
purged after the second package is installed, the conffile is
deleted, which it should not be. The same thing happens if the
first package's postrm deletes conffiles on purge, which it
should not do.
A further problem arises when you have two packages using the
same configuration file, one of which declares it a conffile
and the other manages it with maintainer scripts. If you
install and remove the first, install the second, then purge
the first, then the configuration file is deleted, which is
bad. In theory the second package violates policy but that
doesn't stop people from doing it. See report #163657.
--
Thomas Hood <jdthood0@yahoo.co.uk>
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