Files installed by ifupdown in /etc/init should be conffiles

[Christian Hudon]

I needed to make a change in /etc/init/network-interface.conf to make my persistent PPP connection work with upstart. However my change kept going away after a couple of months. It took me a while to figure out why. The files installed by ifupdown in /etc/init are not marked as conffiles!

Please mark /etc/init/network-interface.conf and friends as conffiles, so if a sysadmin needs to make change to these files, they are retained and do not disappear silently the next time the ifupdown package is upgraded!

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

Which release of Ubuntu are you using? This was fixed in maverick in bug 574042.

10:20:31 - flash:[/tmp] dpkg-query -W --showformat='${Conffiles}' ifupdown
 /etc/network/if-down.d/upstart be2d7ca79c30064a88777f8c6c1d19fe
 /etc/network/if-up.d/upstart 1508668168bca783524789c4c87e28e2
 /etc/init/network-interface.conf af7f31fee8f6192cae0518454ac2154b
 /etc/init/networking.conf 8af8451b188d626e6e7ea92c90d7d64f
 /etc/init/network-interface-security.conf 04449b8f4a377f06cab083dce987ae95

[Christian Hudon (chrish)]

I am using lucid. I had checked in the latest source package before reporting the bug. When I didn't see a "conffiles" in the Debian directory, I assumed this bug was still there. Sorry about the dup.

Could this fix please be backported to lucid, then? This kind of thing is really annoying to sysadmins, who are more likely to run the LTS releases. I can help if you want. Until I figured out this problem, I lost Internet connectivity multiple times on some of my servers (and had to physically get to the console to restart the network connection). It took me a while to suspect this, because .debs usually never ignore local modifications in /etc.

Thanks.

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

10:33 < bdmurray> slangasek: does bug 816117 seem sru'able to lucid to you?
10:33 < ubottu> Launchpad bug 816117 in ifupdown (Ubuntu) "Files installed by
                ifupdown in /etc/init should be conffiles" [Medium,Triaged]
                https://launchpad.net/bugs/816117
10:35 < slangasek> bdmurray: yes, though I think the SRU itself will clobber any
                   local changes the user has made in lucid, so it probably should
                   only be SRUed if there's some other change needed to the package
                   in lucid

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

If you haven't could you please file a bug regarding the changes you needed to make to get your PPP connection working? Thanks in advance!

[Christian Hudon (chrish)]

I just want to note that you can prevent the "SRU itself will clobber any local changes the user has made in lucid" by stashing away a copy of said files in the preinst script. But I guess waiting for some other changes for lucid in the package is fine too. But as it is now, local changes will be overwritten again when upgrading to the next LTS release...

[Christian Hudon (chrish)]

Bryan: just a quick note here to say I've submitted as you asked bug https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/824596 regarding my problems getting a persistent PPP connection to work with lucid. If you guys could have a look at that one too, it'd be really appreciated. Thanks.

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

Fixed in the current development release, so marking as such.

BTW, when installing a new conffile over a file that wasn't previously a conffile, dpkg will prompt the admin whether to overwrite.

[Rolf Leggewie (r0lf)]

lucid has seen the end of its life and is no longer receiving any updates. Marking the lucid task for this ticket as "Won't Fix".