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Re: Removing former conffiles



On Tue, 07 Feb 2006, Frank Küster wrote:
> Don Armstrong <don@debian.org> wrote:
> > On Tue, 07 Feb 2006, Frank Küster wrote:
> >> Don Armstrong <don@debian.org> wrote:
> >> 
> >> > Right. The problem is that it's not always easy to know if the file
> >> > will no longer be read at all; you can't assume that the administrator
> >> > has left in place your default configuration system.
> >> 
> >> Of course the maintainer should know their package.  If the binary reads
> >> a configuration file in /usr/share/bla, and in the old version there was
> >     ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> > This would be a problem.
> 
> Why?  What problem?

You've now got a conffile in a location which is not /etc, namely
/var/lib/bla, which cannot be overridden by the administrator.

Instead, I'd suggest having the symlink in /usr/share/bla pointing to
/etc/bla.cnf which then in the default install is a symlink to
/var/lib/bla or whatever is appropriate; if the user has modified the
configuration file, you don't stick in the symlink. If the user
hasn't, you put in the symlink. [Of course, ideally you'd have a
configuration file language that would enable you to just include the
conf.d directly... but that may not always be possible.]


Don Armstrong

-- 
"The trouble with you, Ibid" he said, "is that you think you're the
biggest bloody authority on everything"
 -- Terry Pratchet _Pyramids_ p146

http://www.donarmstrong.com              http://rzlab.ucr.edu



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