Subject: Bug#3517: innd won't remove syslog.conf lines when purged

From: [email-masked] (Amos Shapira)
Date: Thu, 04 Jul 1996 07:17:26 +0300

Package: inn
Version: 1.4unoff4-1

After running "dpkg --purge inn", the next time the system booted I
noticed a complaint from syslog about not finding /var/news/ files or
somesuch.

It seems like inn will leave the lines it adds to syslog.conf even
when purged.

Thanks.

--Amos

--Amos Shapira                    | "Of course Australia was marked for
133 Shlomo Ben-Yosef st.          |  glory, for its people had been chosen
Jerusalem 93 805                  |  by the finest judges in England."
ISRAEL            [email-masked]  |                     -- Anonymous

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From: Ian Jackson <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 10 Jul 96 00:39 BST

> It seems like inn will leave the lines it adds to syslog.conf even

INN doesn't add things to the syslog.conf - those entries are there
from the start.  The directory /var/log/news is supposed to be part of
the base - which version of the base package do you have installed ?

Ian.

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From: Miquel van Smoorenburg <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 10 Jul 1996 11:36:06 +0200 (MET DST)

> the base - which version of the base package do you have installed ?

The INN package was put together when /var/log/news wasn't part of the
base system, and so /var/log/news is also part of INN. It removes
/var/log/news when purged..

I'm still getting a lot of input on INN and I expect to put out
a new package in a couple of weeks that should fix most bugs that are
reported (I'm not in a hurry - most fixes are cosmetic anyway.  The current
INN package has no fatal bugs AFAIK).

Mike.
-- 
  Miquel van    | Cistron Internet Services   --    Alphen aan den Rijn.
  Smoorenburg,  | mailto:[email-masked]          http://www.cistron.nl/
[email-masked] | Tel: +31-172-419445 (Voice) 430979 (Fax) 442580 (Data)

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From: Scott Barker <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Jul 1996 18:40:25 -0600 (MDT)

> /var/log/news when purged..

Uh-oh. Not again. I went through this with the sys(k)logd packages already.
It seems that when a file is listed as part of two packages, dpkg removes the
reference to it from the first package when the second package is installed.
If the second package is then upgraded, and no longer lists the file, the file
becomes orphaned by dpkg, and will never go away unless removed by hand (or,
worse yet, it goes away and never comes back! -- I haven't figured out why
sometimes a file is orphaned, and sometimes it's lost completely).

Is there a reason dpkg doesn't let two packages own a file? (Aside from the
obvious reason that two packages *shouldn't* own the same file). It doesn't
seem to be a good idea for dpkg to assume that the package maintainers are all
aware of which files are owned by which packages -- simple mistakes by
maintainers can lead to orphaned (or missing) files all over the place...

-- 
Scott Barker
Linux Consultant
[email-masked]
http://www.cuug.ab.ca:8001/~barkers/   (under construction)

[ I try to reply to all e-mail within 5 days. If you don't  ]
[ get a response by then, I probably didn't get your e-mail ]
[ (we have a sometimes sporadic connection to the internet) ]

"The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard."
   - ???

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From: Miquel van Smoorenburg <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 Jul 1996 12:40:19 +0200 (MET DST)

> reference to it from the first package when the second package is installed.

This is not the case here: the INN pre or post rm script does it. It will
be fixed eventually, but it isn't really important right now.

> sometimes a file is orphaned, and sometimes it's lost completely).

Yeah, I've seen this before. I have some local packages: cis-sendmail, and
cis-sysklogd for example. The control file for both is setup to "replace"
the originals.

But as soon as I do an upgrade, the /etc/init.d/sysklogd and
/etc/init.d/sendmail files dissapear! Worse, even a reinstall won't get
them back (they are config-files, and dpkg seems to think the old ones are
still there...). I now keep the init.d files seperate and install them
after the upgrade.

I thought I had setup the packages wrong but now it seems that this
could be a bug in dpkg?

It is probably because when I install cis-sysklogd, sysklogd is
removed but not purged. So it stays in a "deinstalled, config files
remain" status. And even worse: I just did a "dpkg --purge sysklogd" and
all config files dissapeared (AAARGH) even though they belong to
cis-sysklogd. Which is still installed, by the way. But now without
conffiles :((

Mike.

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From: Ian Jackson <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Jul 96 03:04 BST

Scott Barker writes ("Re: Bug#3517: innd won't remove syslog.conf lines when purged"):
...
> sometimes a file is orphaned, and sometimes it's lost completely).

Can you produce a repeatable example of this ?  I think that the
sys[k]logd packages do an awful lot of messing about with files in
their maintainer scripts, and that this is causing all of these
problems.  Certainly there haven't been many complaints in the context
of other packages.

> maintainers can lead to orphaned (or missing) files all over the place...

dpkg doesn't allow two packages to own the same *file*, though it will
allow them to share a directory.

This is because it needs to know which version ought to be installed,
and what to do when each package is removed, &c.

Ian.

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From: Ian Jackson <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Jul 96 03:13 BST

> I thought I had setup the packages wrong but now it seems that this

What it is supposed to do is just `take over' the conffile from one
package to the other.

Do these packages not manipulate the /etc/init.d files themselves, in
their {pre,post}{inst,rm} scripts ?

> cis-sysklogd. Which is still installed, by the way. But now without

What version of dpkg are you using ?

There was a bug here prior to 1.2.4, but that's very old now.

Ian.