On Jul 2, 2005, at 12:37 PM, beartooth wrote:
Is there a good explanation of .rpmnew files somewhere, in terms a subtechnoid can follow? I don't recall ever hearing of them till now.
When RPM upgrades a package, if it notices that you (or another program) have customized a config file, it will do one of two things: Either it will rename your existing file as whatever.conf.rpmsave and create a new default config, or it will leave your config in place and create the new config as whatever.conf.rpmnew.
I'm not entirely sure how it decides which change to make. It may be something the person who builds the package can define.
rpm -U will output a message saying something like "/etc/profile saved as /etc/profile.rpmsave", and in my experience, yum has always output these messages as it installs each package.
So after you do a major upgrade, you should look through /etc for files ending in .rpmsave and .rpmnew, compare them to the current config file, and decide whether to accept the new config, stick with the old one, or pick and choose between them. Most of the time you can get away with using the choice RPM made -- you don't *need* the new command prompt for bash, or you want to keep your list of font directories -- but sometimes something important has changed, and you need to combine your customizations with the new config.
-- fedora-legacy-list@xxxxxxxxxx http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-legacy-list
