Re: Conffiles
On Sun, Jan 03 2010, Russ Allbery wrote:
> Felipe Sateler <fsateler@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> Do conffiles have to be regular files? Policy does not seem to be
>> explicit about this (although I'd be happy to be proven wrong on this),
>> it seems to just talk about "files".
>
> I don't believe that listing symlinks as conffiles works properly at the
> moment. See #421344. It doesn't make any sense to list a directory as a
> conffile. I think that exhausts all the non-regular files that can be in
> a Debian package.
A conffile is, after all, a configuration file. As such, it
contains configuration data, and user changes to such data is what
policy is concerned about preserving. Merely the presence or absence of
a inode or a link does not rise to the level of "configuration data",
in my view. Why add restrictions on what people can do?
Now, if the target of the symlink is under /etc, then the target
is really the configuration file, if the target does not lie under
/etc, we have a policy violation.
> Symlinks as conffiles should ideally work. I think it's just a bug in
> dpkg that they don't.
While it could be made to work, I am not sure I agree that the
result would require the same protection in policy.
I am willing to be persuaded otherwise on this.
manoj
--
"We all suffer from the preoccupation that there exists ... in the loved
one, perfection." -Sidney Poitier
Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@acm.org> <http://www.golden-gryphon.com/>
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