fedora-list Digest, Vol 16, Issue 299

[Randall Shaw]

fedora-list-request at redhat.com:

>> Last night I performed a bunch of updates on various things that needed
>> updates... And many of them overwrote my config files! I spent a good many
>> hours trying to figure out what was overwritten and refix the config files,
>> because:
> 
> Was that a nightly unattended yum update through cron or did you run yum
> update manually? 
> 
>> A) yum didn¹t report where or if it had overwritten a config file
> 
> yum reports config file changes to my knowledge (creation of either
> .rpmsaved or .rpmnew files).
> 
>> B) yum overwrote it without asking or even notifying me!
> 
> If the configuration file a package ships is being made active through
> installation of the package, then an .rpmsaved file is made out of the
> customized config. Else it is a packaging mistake and should be filed as
> a bugzilla report.
> With other words: rpm is responsible for the process on handling
> configuration file changes (replacing a customized one or saving a new
> default one as .rpmnew). yum just wraps this process and informs the
> user about such tasks.
> But there is an open RFE in bugzilla.redhat.com, asking for a yum
> enhancement to have a better and more transparent handling of such cases
> for the normal user.
> 
>> Is there a flag or something undocumented in yum that can tell it inform me
>> a new config files overwriting older ones?
> 
> Information is default. Or do you suppress any output with debug level
> of zero (-d0)?
> 
>> Or a flag that shows where every file was PUT, so I don¹t have to do the
>> hunt search routine after every yum update?


Thanks for the backfeed.

It was a manual update... And turns out it was actually doing what it should
do, I just sort of confused myself with config files vs script files of
certain packages. I had 'altered' some 'script' files to be of better use,
and the yum update had overwritten them. I had gotten confused because I
thought what I was altering was CONFIG files =)

So... My bad. I am now taking a further precaution of backing up any changes
I do to text-based files, script, config, or otherwise... So I wont run into
this problem again.

Thanks again for the info.

-Randall Shaw