Oded Arbel wrote: > On Sat, 2007-01-06 at 16:34 +0200, Shachar Shemesh wrote: > >> Oded Arbel wrote: >> >>> Not having enough experience with Debian, and not having access to an >>> installation totting dpkg, why is -L not listing configuration files ? >>> >>> >> Dpkg distinguishes between config files that always need to be modified >> and config files that arrive with a reasonable default. The way to >> handle the former is to dynamically generate them during the postinst >> script. Such files are not, strictly speaking, handled by the dpkg >> database, and will therefor not appear when you do dpkg -L. >> >> As Lior clearly demonstrated, files belonging to the later category WILL >> get listed when you do "dpkg -L". >> > > I'm only familiar with RPMs notion of configuration files, in which > configuration files are also distributed but have a special behavior > where they are not overwritten when upgrading if they contain local > changes. I'm assuming that when you speak of configuration files with > reasonable defaults you speak of something similar to that. > Yes. If a configuration file was modified, the user will be asked on upgrade whether to keep the old, get the new, or perform some sort of merge. > But I'm not sure what you mean when you say "configuration files that > always need to be modified" - can you give some examples ? > xorg.conf ? > Yes. Debconf typically creates an initial file, so it cannot be part of the package. > httpd.conf ? > No. All local modifications are done via included files, and the basic configuration supplies a working Apache. > aliases ? > Don't think so. > syslog.conf ? > No. Same deal as Apache. > I find it interesting that one can somehow apply some rule to > distinguish between configuration files that "always" need to be changed > and configuration files that need to be changed only in some low > percentage of total installations. > Easy. If the package can supply a configuration file that will be sufficient for over 80% of the users, that's a standard configuration file. Otherwise, you need to generate it.
Shachar -- Shachar Shemesh Lingnu Open Source Consulting ltd. Have you backed up today's work? http://www.lingnu.com/backup.html ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
