On Wed, Jun 01, 2005 at 01:15:37PM +0200, A Mennucc wrote: > On Tue, May 31, 2005 at 01:42:36PM +0200, Michael Piefel wrote: > > Package: lpr-ppd > > Severity: grave > > Justification: causes non-serious data loss > > > > Replacing lpr-ppd with lprng should be a breeze, I read somewhere. But > > after the change, I was left with no /etc/printcap and a dead link to > > that location from /etc/lprng/printcap. Clearly, there is an upgrade > > path missing, even if lprng???s config format may be slightly different. > /etc/printcap is a "conffile" of lpr-ppd ; if > lpr-ppd is removed, /etc/printcap will still be there ; > but if you purge lpr-ppd , dpkg will delete /etc/printcap , > since it is not a conffile of lprng > I see no easy way to solve this problem, since lpr-ppd was > removed from Debian some time ago > 1) one way would be to have a dummy lpr-ppd package that depends > on lprng, and that does not have /etc/printcap as a conffile > I dont know if the debian-release time would approve its > inclusion in Debian/Sarge , though > Moreover this would *force* people that are using lpr-ppd > to switch to lprng, and this is not what I want: I cannot > guarantee that the switch would be 100% painless and transparent > 2) another solution would be to change lprng so that /etc/printcap > is a conffile ( I am not sure if this would work, though) > any suggestions? I don't see any reason to worry about it; I think it was a bug for lpr-ppd to ship /etc/printcap as a conffile, but it's a historical bug that I don't think we should be trying to fix now. The simple answer is "well, don't purge packages without looking at the conffile list!". It would definitely be wrong for lprng to declare /etc/printcap as a conffile; there are many packages that use /etc/printcap, with no common package they can depend on which could own this conffile, and /etc/printcap also doesn't fit policy's description of what a conffile should be. (If you're installing a printer daemon, you almost certainly want to print, which means customizing the printcap...) Thanks, -- Steve Langasek postmodern programmer
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