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Re: What happens when you upgrade a package with modified config files?



Karl E. Jorgensen grabbed a keyboard and wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 08, 2013 at 03:42:30PM +0000, David Guntner wrote:
>> Hi, all.
>>
>> Back in the days when I was using Mandriva (which RPM-based), when I
>> updated a package that had a configuration file that I had modified,
>> urpmi was smart enough to realize it, and wouldn't just blindly wipe it
>> out.  Instead, it would create a new copy for you to look over and
>> merge.  I.E., you'd end up with something like:
>>
>> /etc/somepackage.conf.rpmnew
> 
> Yuck!

Better than overwriting a user-modified file. :-)

>> Then after doing the update, I could look for files with .rpmnew at the
>> end and work on making any changes needed.  Heck, we even had a really
>> handy script called etc-update which would go through the /etc directory
>> looking for .rpmnew files and would then give you the choice of use the
>> new file, keep the old file (& delete the new one) or merge the two
>> together, which would diff the two and present the changes in groups
>> side-by-side and you'd then select to use the left side (original
>> content) or use the right side (the new content in the .rpmnew file) and
>> you'd go through that until you were done.
> 
> Sounds like my experience of redhat... the bad old days.

Hey, the etc-update tool was *very* handy - any kind of situation like
this is tedious at best, but it sure as heck beat having to open up two
windows side-by-side to go through the old & new config files to copy
across new stuff that you wanted to include in your existing config
without losing your customized settings.  This was especially handy
after having done a full system upgrade - you ran the script and it
found every single one of them and led you through them, one at a time.

>> Regardless of an etc-update like tool, is that how it works in Debian?
>> Does it avoid overwriting config files which have been changed by you
>> since they were installed, and if so, does it put the new content with
>> an easy-to-search-for .something at the end?
> 
> Unless the package maintainer tries to do something fancy and gets it
> wrong, Debian will by default do the "right thing" when dealing with
> configuration files - gory details at
> 
>   http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ap-pkg-conffiles.html

I'll read that, thanks!

> In my experience:
> 
> - If you have not modified the configuration, the new config will be
>   substituted.
> 
> - If you *have* modified the configuration, most interfaces will give
>   you a diff between your current configuration and ask what to do.  I
>   typically open up a different session and use vim/emacs to merge the
>   two sets of changes at this point.

You mean there will be a bunch of .diff files for you to have to look
through?  Or something else?

> Hope this helps

Thanks.

              --Dave


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