Modifies /etc/default/apport during upgrade, causing conffile prompt

[Lionel Le Folgoc]

Binary package hint: apport

Hi,

When upgrading from hardy up-to-date to lucid (today), dpkg detected a conffile as being modified and prompted me for an action, but this isn't correct, I didn't modify the file.

Before upgrading, md5sums were identical:
 /etc/default/apport 51235ce40afb375944f7649f35bfd335 (from dpkg-query)
51235ce40afb375944f7649f35bfd335 /etc/default/apport (on the system)

Prompt during the upgrade (sorry, in French, but it's just a standard dpkg prompt for modified files) :
Paramétrage de apport (1.12-0ubuntu3) ...

Fichier de configuration « /etc/default/apport »
 ==> Modifié (par vous ou par un script) depuis l'installation.
 ==> Le distributeur du paquet a fourni une version mise à jour.
   Que voulez-vous faire ? Vos options sont les suivantes :
    Y ou I  : installer la version du responsable du paquet
    N ou O  : garder votre version actuellement installée
      D  : afficher les différences entre les versions
      Z  : suspendre ce processus pour examiner la situation
 L'action par défaut garde votre version actuelle.
*** apport (Y/I/N/O/D/Z) [défaut=N] ? y
Installation de la nouvelle version du fichier de configuration /etc/default/apport ...
Installation de la nouvelle version du fichier de configuration /etc/cron.daily/apport ...
apport start/running

Diff:
/etc/default/apport
--- /etc/default/apport 2010-02-06 13:42:14.000000000 +0100
+++ /etc/default/apport.dpkg-new 2010-01-26 18:17:05.000000000 +0100
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 # set this to 0 to disable apport, or to 1 to enable it
 # you can temporarily override this with
-# sudo force_start=1 /etc/init.d/apport start
+# sudo service apport start force_start=1
 enabled=1

 # set maximum core dump file size (default: 209715200 bytes == 200 MB)

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
CrashReports: 666:0:0:185963:2010-02-06 14:20:12.000000000 +0100:2010-02-06 14:30:04.000000000 +0100:/var/crash/xulrunner-1.9.0.crash
Date: Sat Feb 6 14:31:50 2010
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
Package: apport 1.12-0ubuntu3
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=fr_FR.utf8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-12.17-generic-pae
SourcePackage: apport
Uname: Linux 2.6.32-12-generic-pae i686

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

hm, weird. I installed Hardy's apport on current lucid, and get the same md5sum:

$ dpkg -s apport
Conffiles:
 /etc/cron.daily/apport 5402a621f301207f7b5d4764242d9d29
 /etc/default/apport 51235ce40afb375944f7649f35bfd335

Upgrading:
$ sudo LANG= apt-get dist-upgrade

The following packages will be upgraded:
  apport
1 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
[...]
Setting up apport (1.12-0ubuntu3) ...
Installing new version of config file /etc/default/apport ...
Installing new version of config file /etc/cron.daily/apport ...

Apport does not have any maintainer scripts which would fiddle with the conffiles.

I suppose what happened is that update-manager temporarily enabled apport during the upgrade, which causes this conffile prompt. As a workaround, we could perhaps stuff Lucid's default file into update-manager and install that instead of merely flipping it on? (I. e. update the comment as well).

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

This is no longer the case in update-manager as it just starts the service one time:

    def enableApport(self, fname="/etc/default/apport"):
        """ enable apport """
        # startup apport just until the next reboot, it has the magic
        # "force_start" environment for this
        subprocess.call(["service","apport","start","force_start=1"])

You can see it may used to have modified /etc/default/apport though. Regardless this is Fix Released.