Re: dpkg status Conffiles obsolete flag?
On 2011-07-10 20:55 +0200, Bob Proulx wrote:
> I am hoping to understand the "obsolete" flag on conffiles in the dpkg
> status file. There are many packages that include this flag at the
> end of the line. For example:
>
> Package: file
> Conffiles:
> /etc/magic.mime 272913026300e7ae9b5e2d51f138e674 obsolete
> /etc/magic 272913026300e7ae9b5e2d51f138e674 obsolete
>
> And there many more examples such as in apache2.2-common and gsfonts.
> These conffiles that are marked obsolete do exist on the system.
>
> I could not find where this was documented. The man page or dpkg says:
>
> /var/lib/dpkg/status
> Statuses of available packages. This file contains
> information about whether a package is marked for
> removing or not, whether it is installed or not,
> etc. See section INFORMATION ABOUT PACKAGES for more
> info.
>
> But the section "INFORMATION ABOUT PACKAGES" does not say anything
> about this field that I could find.
>
> I downloaded the source to several packages having obsolete conffiles
> marked and I could not find any reference in the package that would
> cause those files to be marked as obsolete.
They are obsolete because they no longer exist in the package. It is
the package maintainer's task to deal with them (e.g. remove them if
they are unmodified and no longer needed). Unfortunately, this is often
not done.
> The reason I am looking at this is because I am trying to automate
> system upgrades from Lenny to Squeeze and some packages have init.d
> scripts that are marked obsolete and I am trying to understand why.
>
> Could some kind soul enlighten me on how conffiles are marked obsolete?
When they are no longer shipped in the package that used to contain
them; dpkg does not currently remove obsolete conffiles unless that
package is purged, see #330256¹.
Cheers,
Sven
¹ http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=330256
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