Upgrade from warty causes dpkg questions

[LaMont Jones]

Upgrading from a virgin warty install on i386, dpkg decides that the following
config files have been modified, and require my decision on what to do with them
(which violates the ask-no-questions policy...):

/etc/udev/scripts/scsi-devfs.sh
/etc/udev/scripts/cdsymlinks.sh
/etc/udev/scripts/ide-devfs.sh

In fact, none of these were modified by the admin of the machine.

[Matt Zimmerman (mdz)]

This is the usual conffile renaming problem. These files were moved from
/etc/udev to /etc/udev/scripts, and so are moved in udev's preinst.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

This should be fixed by the final release. Scott, please feel free to reassign
to me if you don't have time for this.

[Scott James Remnant (Canonical) (canonical-scott)]

I've got some dpkg time allocated from next week to fix bugs for hoary; I can
add this one onto the list if mdz wants it fixed before release.

[Matt Zimmerman (mdz)]

Highest priority for dpkg is #7401; others are secondary.

Does this correspond to a debbugs bug? If so, set the alias to deb<debbugs
bug#>. What is the nature of the bug, dpkg-wise?

[Scott James Remnant (Canonical) (canonical-scott)]

http://descent.netsplit.com/~scott/move_conffile.txt

Here's a recipie for correctly (I hope) moving a conffile.

This isn't easy to fix in dpkg because dpkg needs to support people
transitioning between conffile, non-conffile and file-made-in-postinst without
breaking. I have a plan, but that would require the old version of udev with
the old filenames to be modified too and it's kinda too late for that now.

I think using this recipie for now is the right solution, while I work on the
dpkg file metadata stuff.

For the record, the first function should be placed in preinst and then in the
"install" (with a version) or "upgrade" modes do something like:

    preinst_prepare_move_conffile /etc/udev/ide-devfs.sh

The second function should be placed in postinst and then in the "configure"
mode (with a version) do something like:

    postinst_move_conffile /etc/udev/ide-devfs.sh /etc/udev/scripts/ide-devfs.sh

Of course, a hard-line reading of policy says that maintainer scripts may not
modify a conffile, and this technically does so.

The "proper" solution, fwiw, is basically to support renames in the packaging
format.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

 udev (0.050-3ubuntu6) hoary; urgency=low
 .
   * debian/udev.preinst: Handle conffile move without dpkg questions.
     (Ubuntu #4973)