On Sep 27, 2007, at 3:28 PM, Steven Stromer wrote:
Hi,
This question was asked in comp.mail.sendmail back in 2003, but was
never fully resolved. Since it refers to an rpm specific update,
I'll ask here.
I just updated sendmail using yum, and found a sendmail.cf.rpmnew
file. There are numerous changes in this .cf file that seem
important, but they will certainly be overwritten the next time the
sendmail service restarts and the .mc file is processed.
Are we expected to search our existing .mc files, and make them
match the newest changes from the sendmail.cf.rpmnew file? I don't
even believe that all of the changes could be made to match by
revising the .mc file alone.
Basically yes.
Wouldn't it make so much more sense for both new sendmail.cf.rpmnew
and a sendmail.mc.rpmnew files to have been distributed? Apologies
if this is a well documented faq that I missed in my search. My
hopes are that this is just a packaging error.
I can try to describe what is happening, but have little to say about
"sensible" or "packaging flaw".
rpm tries very hard not to clobber locally modified configuration files
on upgrade. This is done by marking files in packages with %config
and/or %config(noreplace).
There are two basic resolutions when upgrading modified configuration
files:
1) Rename the old file, and replace the file with new content.
FIles marked "%config" in *.rpm packages will have this behavior.
A modified file will be renamed (with extension .rpmsave iirc),
and the file is replace.
2) Keep the old file exactly as is, but save the new file next to the
old.
FIles marked "%config(noreplace)" in *.rpm packages will have this
behavior, the new file is installed with extension ".rpmnew".
Its up to the system administrator to merge the new changes.
That explains how the *.rpmnew files arrived.
You've pointed out Yet Another Flaw with the %config handling in rpm.
The sendmail.cf should be paired with a corresponding sendmail.mc file.
But when one file is modified and the other is not, then the pairing
after an
rpm upgrade is wrong.
73 de Jeff
_______________________________________________
Rpm-list mailing list
Rpm-list@xxxxxxxxxx
https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/rpm-list
