[Piuparts-devel] Bug#696081: bug for tracking "modifies conffiles" bugs for packages in lenny that have been removed afterwards

[Andreas Beckmann]

Package: piuparts
Severity: normal
User: debian-qa at lists.debian.org
Usertags: piuparts
Control: affects -1 + nessusd geordi mailreader pdbv 
# /etc/nessus/nessusd.conf
Control: found -1 nessusd/2.2.10-3
# /etc/geordi/irc-config
Control: found -1 geordi/0:20080725T0146-1+lenny1
# /var/lib/mailreader/ads/debian/ad.cfg, /etc/mailreader/{main,server}.cfg
Control: found -1 mailreader/2.3.36-3.1
# /etc/pdbv/pdbvrc
Control: found -1 pdbv/2.0.11-0.4


Since these bugs apply to lenny only (because the packages no longer 
exist in neither squeeze nor sid), there is no use in reporting them 
against the buggy packages.
So we are just tracking them here for use with piuparts-analyze.


Hi,

during a test with piuparts I noticed your package modifies conffiles.
This is forbidden by the policy, see
http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-files.html#s-config-files

10.7.3: "[...] The easy way to achieve this behavior is to make the
configuration file a conffile. [...] This implies that the default
version will be part of the package distribution, and must not be
modified by the maintainer scripts during installation (or at any
other time)."

Note that once a package ships a modified version of that conffile,
dpkg will prompt the user for an action how to handle the upgrade of
this modified conffile (that was not modified by the user).

Further in 10.7.3: "[...] must not ask unnecessary questions
(particularly during upgrades) [...]"

If a configuration file is customized by a maintainer script after
having asked some debconf questions, it may not be marked as a
conffile. Instead a template could be installed in /usr/share and used
by the postinst script to fill in the custom values and create (or
update) the configuration file (preserving any user modifications!).
This file must be removed during postrm purge.
ucf(1) may help with these tasks.
See also http://wiki.debian.org/DpkgConffileHandling

In https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2012/09/msg00412.html and
followups it has been agreed that these bugs are to be filed with
severity serious.

debsums reports modification of the following files,
from the attached log (scroll to the bottom...):



cheers,

Andreas