Bug#22935: PROPOSED] Do not make hardlinks to conffiles
On 20-Jun-00, 17:00 (CDT), Julian Gilbey <J.D.Gilbey@qmw.ac.uk> wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 20, 2000 at 10:08:30AM -0700, Chris Waters wrote:
> > Rationale: this is because an admin might edit a conffile without
> > updating the links, resulting in an inconsistent system.
>
> I don't believe that this is the problem. As far as I understood it,
> what happens is this. Call the files /etc/foo.conf (the conffile) and
> /var/pkg/conf (the hardlink).
>
> (1) Sysadmin edits /var/pkg/conf. No problems: /etc/foo.conf remains
> a hardlink to /var/pkg/conf and the files are still in sync.
Not necessarily true -- it depends on the editor. Some editors "edit"
/etc/foo.conf by creating a copy, and then moving the copy over the
original when a save occurs. For example, emacs can be configured to
behave this way. If this is done, the hardlink is broken.
But your rationale (2) is also correct and sufficient.
As for whether it should be policy vs. packaging, I think there are
already a bunch of things in policy in that are really dpkg issues, and
it's more likely to be seen/respected in the policy manual.
Steve
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