Re: #47267 I have a strong suspicion that the fault here lies with the pam-apps package -- specifically, with its prerm or postrm. Unfortunately, as pam-apps is obsolete and I can't find a copy of the package anywhere, I can't confirm my suspicion.
The hypothesis is that the pam-apps postrm deleted /etc/pam.d/su on remove or purge. Other packages' postrms have been caught doing the same (wrong) thing. In one of the control messages Ben Collins wrote: > After much investigation, I've concluded that this could > only be a problem in dpkg. Since there is no way I can > reproduce it, and the fact that it _should_ work, only means > that it is not the fault of the packages (since they only > supply the files, not decide how they get placed/upgraded). It is not clear from this whether or not B.C. looked at pam-apps's postrm. That he couldn't reproduce the misbehavior suggests that he didn't look at it. I don't agree with B.C.'s conclusion that the problem can only be in dpkg. Packages don't only supply files, they also contain maintainer scripts -- which can do naughty things, such as delete conffiles. Conffiles should be left to dpkg to delete on purge. Can the originator of the report (Bill Gribble) reproduce the bug? If not, then I suggest that this report be closed, as it probably concerns an obsolete package. -- Thomas Hood
