Bug#688739: grub-common: modifies conffiles during upgrade (policy 10.7.3): /etc/grub.d/05_debian_theme

[Andreas Beckmann]

Package: grub-common
Version: 1.99-22.1
Severity: serious
User: debian-qa at lists.debian.org
Usertags: piuparts
Control: affects -1 + grub-pc grub-ieee1275 grub-efi-ia32 grub-efi-amd64 grub-coreboot

Hi,

during a test with piuparts I noticed that some package modifies your
conffile /etc/grub.d/05_debian_theme during the squeeze->wheezy
distupgrade.
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...):

  /etc/grub.d/05_debian_theme

This is triggered by testing the folowing packages: 

  grub-pc
  grub-ieee1275
  grub-efi-ia32
  grub-efi-amd64
  grub-coreboot

cheers,

Andreas
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