Re: transitioning config files between two packages
On Wed, Sep 13, 2006 at 12:40:33AM +0200, sean finney wrote:
> On Tue, 2006-09-12 at 13:21 -0700, Steve Langasek wrote:
> > > No, it's a general problem: dpkg won't notice that a conffile has been
> > > moved from one package to the other, no matter whether it declares
> > > "Replaces" or whatever. There's simply no solution within dpkg at the
> > > moment.
> > Where do you get this? Conflicts:/Replaces: has been used quite
> > successfully to transfer ownership of conffiles for, e.g., the Xorg
> > packages, without spurious prompts.
> in the case of the xorg packages, were the original "owning" packages
> still present in any form when dpkg configured the new package? or were
> the conflicts versionless and the packages removed?
The example I have in mind is x11-common, which has an unversioned
Conflicts/Replaces on xfree86-common, superseding that package in etch. An
example of a conffile that has changed ownership between these two packages
is /etc/X11/Xsession.
I don't know what happens if there is a versioned Conflicts/Replaces
instead, and the conflicted-with package remains installed in a newer
version as a result. It's certainly possible that doesn't work nearly as
smoothly, a conclusion supported by your original post.
I do know also that beginning with the dpkg version in etch, the Conflicts:
is no longer required when moving conffiles, it's possible to use Replaces:
by itself.
> also, if you have an answer to the original question it'd be
> appreciated. i'd really really like to avoid using ucf, since there's
> something like 40 conffiles shared between the packages. but having
> asked on #d-d a few times as well as here and not having heard anything,
> i'm afraid i'm going to have to bite the bullet on this one as frank
> suggests.
After an upgrade and answering all of the conffile prompts, does
/var/lib/dpkg/info/nagios-plugins.conffiles still exist and reference these
files? Depending on what dpkg is really doing here, it may well be possible
to handle the conffile transfer in maintainer scripts. (And I thought
dpkg.org once had recipes for exactly this, but unfortunately the site has
been down for some time now. :/)
--
Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world.
vorlon@debian.org http://www.debian.org/
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