On Fri, Jun 20, 2003, Martin Andrews wrote:
> I'll add my vote to Bill's side. I use cfengine to roll out my configuration files
> and then install software and (re)start services. I found it really annoying that
> installing postfix overwrote my configuration files. If it does that during an
> update too it is very bad.
rpm does a "best effort".
When the default configuration doesn't change, the user configuration
is kept as is, because it is unlikely that it will conflict with the
new version of the software.
When the default configuration does change, it is installed and the
user configuration is saved as .rpmsave. When the default changes
one can assume that the user config needs change as well and simply
keeping it might cause problems as well. Just think about an unsafe
default that the user had simply copied into his configuration.
If you want always to keep the user configuration _as is_ you assume
that the user configuration is "perfect" and always the right thing.
I have strong doubts that this is a safe assumption.
You are right that the default configuration often isn't usuable
for a production system and installing a default configuration is
likeley to interrupt services. But I believe you already have the
right answer to this problem: use a configuration management system
like cfengine. When upgrading a system, cfengine could stop and
disable the affected services, do the upgrade and verify configurations
(it should not simply override what is there). When all is well it
can enable and start the services again.
What I'd like to add to the OpenPKG system is some internal safety.
Like my suggestion to auto-disable services that have .rpmsave'd
configurations.
Greetings,
--
,eM""=. a"-. Michael van Elst
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