extlinux-update ignores EXTLINUX_UPDATE="false"

[Akkana Peck]

I have
EXTLINUX_UPDATE="false"
in /etc/default/extlinux, so that I can maintain my own /boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf. In Oneiric this worked fine. But on my newly installed Precise Pangolin, I just did an apt-get dist-upgrade, got a new kernel, and lost my extlinux.conf file.

I haven't been able to determine why this happened. If I run extlinux-update by hand, it prints
P: extlinux-update is disabled in /etc/default/extlinux.
as expected. But somehow the kernel install ignored that and replaced extlinux.conf. Could it have its own extlinux updater rather than using extlinux-update?

EXTLINUX-UPDATE(8) still states that putting "false" there will prevent the updater from modifying anything in /boot/extlinux.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.04
Package: extlinux 2:4.05+dfsg-2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.2.0-23.36-generic-pae 3.2.14
Uname: Linux 3.2.0-23-generic-pae i686
ApportVersion: 2.0.1-0ubuntu7
Architecture: i386
Date: Fri Apr 27 19:06:03 2012
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 12.04 LTS "Precise Pangolin" - Release i386 (20120423.2)
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=xterm
 LC_COLLATE=C
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/zsh
SourcePackage: syslinux
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Akkana Peck (akkzilla)]

Additionally, a request: it would be lovely if extlinux-update would make a backup copy of files it replaces, so anyone hit by an issue like this (or who just doesn't know yet about /etc/default/extlinux) can recover their work more easily.