[Pkg-sysvinit-devel] Bug#674460: initscripts: prompting due to modified conffiles which were not modified by the user

[Andreas Beckmann]

Package: initscripts
Version: 2.88dsf-25
Severity: serious
User: debian-qa at lists.debian.org
Usertags: piuparts

Hi,

during a test with piuparts I noticed your package failed the piuparts
upgrade test because dpkg detected a conffile as being modified and then
prompted the user for an action. As there is no user input, this fails.
But this is not the real problem, the real problem is that this prompt
shows up in the first place, as there was nobody modifying this conffile
at all, the package has just been installed and upgraded...

This is a violation of policy 10.7.3, see
http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-files.html#s10.7.3,
which says "[These scripts handling conffiles] must not ask unnecessary
questions (particularly during upgrades), and must otherwise be good
citizens."

http://wiki.debian.org/DpkgConffileHandling should help with figuring
out how to do this properly.

In http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2009/08/msg00675.html and
followups it has been agreed that these bugs are to be filed with
severity serious.

>From the attached log (scroll to the bottom...):

  Preparing to replace initscripts 2.88dsf-22.1 (using .../initscripts_2.88dsf-25_amd64.deb) ...
  Removing unmodified and obsolete conffile /etc/init.d/mountoverflowtmp ...
  Removing unmodified and obsolete conffile /etc/init.d/bootlogs ...
  Unpacking replacement initscripts ...
  Setting up initscripts (2.88dsf-25) ...
  Installing new version of config file /etc/init.d/bootmisc.sh ...
  Installing new version of config file /etc/init.d/mountall.sh ...
  Installing new version of config file /etc/init.d/mountall-bootclean.sh ...
  Installing new version of config file /etc/init.d/mountnfs-bootclean.sh ...
  Installing new version of config file /etc/init.d/mountdevsubfs.sh ...
  Installing new version of config file /etc/init.d/mountkernfs.sh ...
  Installing new version of config file /etc/init.d/umountnfs.sh ...
  Installing new version of config file /etc/init.d/urandom ...
  
  Configuration file `/etc/default/rcS'
   ==> File on system created by you or by a script.
   ==> File also in package provided by package maintainer.
     What would you like to do about it ?  Your options are:
      Y or I  : install the package maintainer's version
      N or O  : keep your currently-installed version
        D     : show the differences between the versions
        Z     : start a shell to examine the situation
   The default action is to keep your current version.
  *** rcS (Y/I/N/O/D/Z) [default=N] ? dpkg: error processing initscripts (--configure):
   EOF on stdin at conffile prompt
  Errors were encountered while processing:
   initscripts

This was observed on a distupgrade from sid to experimental.
There needs to be a way to detect if /etc/default/rcS is "unmodified"
(and there are probably a lot of different unmodified variants that
should allow seamless upgrades) before it's made a conffile.

cheers,

Andreas
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