Bug#21585: PROPOSED] /etc/init.d/<script> need not be a conf
> >>
> >> This would take away the admins ability to make modifications to the
> >> scripts.
> >> I would find this to be a bad thing.
> >
> > Maybe the wording's slightly wrong then. Maybe I should say
> > "locally-modified scripts" rather than "user-modified scripts"?
> >
> > I mean files such as /etc/init.d/xntp3 which are created in a
> > customised way by the postinst when xntp3 is first installed. Having
> > it as a conffile would not work, because then every time the package
> > is upgraded an unnecessary warning would be given. Rather, the
> > postinst checks to see whether the file already exists and creates it
> > if it doesn't. So no local modifications would be lost.
> >
> > Does that make things clearer?
>
> I think that a smarter way of doing this would be better. A user should be
> able to edit things in /etc and be reasonably sure that the changes will not
> disappear.
Absolutely: the changes will only disappear when the package is
purged. The scripts must make certain not to touch any configuration
files in /etc without permission from the person installing. In the
case of xntp3 (as was), this was achieved by only creating it if it
was not present, and only making local modifications after doing so if
the user agreed to this. The scripts never modified the configuration
files without the explicit agreement of the installer.
Julian
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Julian Gilbey, Dept of Maths, QMW, Univ. of London. J.D.Gilbey@qmw.ac.uk
Debian GNU/Linux Developer, see http://www.debian.org/~jdg
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