Missing configuration files for Alpine in Fedora 8, 9

[Michael Hannon]

Greetings.  I've been seeing some strange behavior with the "alpine"
package in Fedora 8 and 9 recently.

The gist of it is that there don't seem to be any configuration files
for alpine, even though RPM lists them.

Here's an example from a Fedora 8 system.  I get the same thing on a
Fedora 9 system.

[root@localsys ~]# grep alpine /var/log/yum.log
    Oct 27 16:58:27 Installed: alpine-2.00-1.fc8.i386

No complaints from the installer.  OK, what got installed?

[root@localsys ~]# rpm -ql alpine
    /etc/pine.conf
    /etc/pine.conf.fixed
    /usr/bin/alpine
    /usr/bin/pico
    /usr/bin/pilot
    /usr/bin/rpdump
    /usr/bin/rpload
    /usr/share/doc/alpine-2.00
    /usr/share/doc/alpine-2.00/LICENSE
    /usr/share/doc/alpine-2.00/README
    /usr/share/doc/alpine-2.00/tech-notes.txt
    /usr/share/man/man1/alpine.1.gz
    /usr/share/man/man1/pico.1.gz
    /usr/share/man/man1/pilot.1.gz
    /usr/share/man/man1/rpdump.1.gz
    /usr/share/man/man1/rpload.1.gz

That shows not one but two configuration files in /etc/.

On the other hand, there are no such configuration files:

[root@localsys ~]# ls -ld /etc/*pine*
    ls: cannot access /etc/*pine*: No such file or directory

Maybe something's wrong with the installation?  RPM doesn't think so:

[root@localsys ~]# rpm --verify alpine
    [root@localsys ~]#

This is significant because the alpine binary seems to have been
compiled with /usr/local as the default location for browsers, for
instance.  I won't repeat the output here, but try:

strings /usr/bin/alpine | grep netscape
or
    strings /usr/bin/alpine | grep lynx

I suppose this could be "fixed" by changing individual .pinerc files,
but that seems to be treating the symptom, not the problem.

Note that I have seen a directory:

/etc/alpine

on some systems, and on one system running Scientific Linux I do find a
file:

/etc/alpine/pine.conf

On the Fedora systems that I've examined, either the /etc/alpine
directory is missing altogether, or it is there but empty.

Is this a local problem, or are others seeing it too?

Thanks.

-- Mike

[Ian Hilt]

On Mon, 27 Oct 2008, Michael Hannon wrote:
> The gist of it is that there don't seem to be any configuration files
> for alpine, even though RPM lists them.

I guess my question is: why is this a problem?  If you want a
configuration file, just do 'alpine -conf'.  Although, I'm sure you know
to do this.  Granted, the rpm query returned bogus results, which should
be fixed, but I don't see a "problem" with this installation of alpine.

Ian

[Rex Dieter]

Michael Hannon wrote:
> Greetings.  I've been seeing some strange behavior with the "alpine"
> package in Fedora 8 and 9 recently.
>
> The gist of it is that there don't seem to be any configuration files
> for alpine, even though RPM lists them.

...
> No complaints from the installer.  OK, what got installed?
> [root@localsys ~]# rpm -ql alpine
> /etc/pine.conf
> /etc/pine.conf.fixed

Those files are marked as
%ghost %config(noreplace)
which means they're not present by default, but will be used and won't be
removed/modified by alpine updates.

-- Rex