Bug#673271: libc-bin: Please include /etc/nsswitch.conf

[Santiago Vila <sanvila@unex.es>]

Package: libc-bin
Version: 2.13-32

We should probably move /etc/nsswitch.conf from base-files to libc-bin,
as it is really a configuration file for libc6.

The file was in base-files for historical reasons, but now that there
is a libc-bin package and it's essential, that would be its real place.

[ You can take the master copy from /usr/share/base-files/nsswitch.conf
  from any Debian system ].

This file is currently installed by base-files postinst in this way:

#!/bin/sh
set -e

install_from_default() {
  if [ ! -f $2 ]; then
    cp -p $1 $2
  fi
}

[...]

if [ "$1" = "configure" ] && [ "$2" = "" ]; then
  install_from_default /usr/share/base-files/nsswitch.conf /etc/nsswitch.conf
  [...]

i.e. the file is put there when base-files is installed by
debootstrap, and it's not touched again.


For now, I think you can simply do a similar thing in libc-bin at any
given time (i.e. copy the file from a directory owned by libc-bin),
as this move does not require any coordination between libc-bin and
base-files (nothing bad will happen if two different packages put the
same file there when the file is not there).

We could then wait for a stable release to happen (ideally, wheezy),
and then I could remove this stuff from base-files.

Please note that people is now asking for a procedure to add and
remove entries to this file (see Bug#649265), and for that reason the
file should not be a conffile.

Thanks.