[Pkg-sysvinit-devel] Bug#624391: initscripts: postinst dupes /etc/motd into /etc/motd.tail

[Andrew Pollock]

Package: initscripts
Version: 2.86.ds1-61
Severity: minor

I encountered this bug on Ubuntu 10.04, but the maintainer script in question
appears unmodified from Debian.

Basically, the postinst of initscripts appears to copy the contents of
/etc/motd into /etc/motd.tail, if it doesn't exist.

This appears to be benign on Debian, but on Ubuntu, which will dynamically
create an /etc/motd out of shell fragments in /etc/update-motd.d and
/etc/motd.tail, it has the undesired effect of caused duplicated stale content.

Ubuntu recently pushed an updated initscripts package to 10.04, which caused
the problem I describe.

More information in https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/sysvinit/+bug/634387

In short, I don't think the postinst should be creating an /etc/motd.tail if
one doesn't exist already. I also don't think it should go putting anything in
it if it does exist.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 5.0.8
  APT prefers oldstable
  APT policy: (500, 'oldstable'), (1, 'experimental'), (1, 'unstable'), (1, 'testing')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.32-2-686 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash

Versions of packages initscripts depends on:
ii  debianutils                 2.30         Miscellaneous utilities specific t
ii  e2fsprogs                   1.41.3-1     ext2/ext3/ext4 file system utiliti
ii  libc6                       2.7-18lenny7 GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii  lsb-base                    3.2-20       Linux Standard Base 3.2 init scrip
ii  mount                       2.13.1.1-1   Tools for mounting and manipulatin
ii  sysvinit-utils              2.86.ds1-61  System-V-like utilities

Versions of packages initscripts recommends:
ii  psmisc                        22.6-1     Utilities that use the proc filesy

initscripts suggests no packages.

-- no debconf information