Update strategies (was Re: [TriLUG] Re: Newbie question reguarding YUM and Linux.)

Jason Faulkner jasonlf at gmail.com
Wed Jan 11 15:44:13 EST 2006


On 1/11/06, Tanner Lovelace <clubjuggler at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1/11/06, Jason Faulkner <jasonlf at gmail.com> wrote:
> > (I haven't used RH in a while, so correct me if I'm wrong)
> >
> > Doesn't RH automatically replace config files saving the old as
> > .rpmsave when they change? That to me is reason enough not to auto
> > update.
>
> The behavior of how rpm based distributions handle config files is fairly
> complex and not well understood.  It all depends on if the files are
> specified as config files in the RPM file list.  If they aren't, they are
> blindly overwritten, no questions asked, nothing saved.  Since this
> has to be done by hand (or at least up until I quit working with
> RPM spec files regularly), there is lots of room for error here.
>
> But, assuming the config files are correctly specified in the rpm spec
> file, then it depends on if you specify %config(noreplace) (iirc, since
> I'm probably rusty on this) then the new file will be added as
> configfilename.rpmnew.  I don't remember under what conditions
> it will replace the config file and rename the older one as
> configfilename.rpmsave, but that exists too.

This, to me, is plenty of reason not to automatically update.

--
Jason Faulkner
------------------------
OldOs.org Owner/Admin //
OpenDocument Fellowship Sysadmin


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