[Pkg-sympa-devel] Bug#587154: Sympa upgrade overwrites current .conf files

[Ari Epstein]

I experience this bug too on every upgrade in the 6.0.x series (most
recently, 6.0.1+dfsg-3), and in my situation it renders the package
uninstallable.  I have the database for sympa located on a different
server and no sympa database on the local server.  It appears that even
if "/etc/dbconfig-common/sympa.conf" has the right settings, the
configuration file installed has the corresponding, auto-generated line
commented out -- forcing the localhost default.

My old workaround was to run mysql on the local server just long enough
to make the installation succeed then manually restore sympa.conf and
wwsympa.conf from backups, but this is kludgy.  My new workaround is to
run a loop script that restores these files while the upgrade is in
progress so sympa starts from the original config file instead of the
backup and installation succeeds.  There seem to be two issues:

#1 The host line in the auto-generated file is commented out, so
dbconfig-common customization of the host line is impossible.
#2 sympa.conf and wwsympa.conf are both replaced by the installer
scripts or scripts invoked by those scripts

The output from a botched installation is below.

ate2 at kvm03:~$ sudo aptitude install -f
The following partially installed packages will be configured:
  sympa 
No packages will be installed, upgraded, or removed.
0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 0 B of archives. After unpacking 0 B will be used.
Setting up sympa (6.0.1+dfsg-3) ...
dbconfig-common: writing config to /etc/dbconfig-common/sympa.conf
apache2: installation seems OK ...
apache2: installation seems OK ...
Reloading web server config: apache2.
DBI connect('sympa:localhost','sympa',...) failed: Can't connect to
local MySQL server through socket '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock' (2)
at /usr/share/sympa/lib/SQLSource.pm line 176
SQLSource::connect() Can't connect to Database DBI:mysql:sympa:localhost
as sympa
List::check_db_connect() Failed to connect to database
DBI connect('dbname=mysql;host=localhost','root',...) failed: Can't
connect to local MySQL server through socket
'/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock' (2) at /usr/share/sympa/lib/SQLSource.pm
line 293
SQLSource::create_db() Cannot connect as root to database
Database sympa defined in sympa.conf has not the right structure or is
unreachable. verify db_xxx parameters in sympa.conf
dpkg: error processing sympa (--configure):
 subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit
status 1
configured to not write apport reports
                                      Errors were encountered while
processing:
 sympa
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
A package failed to install.  Trying to recover:
Setting up sympa (6.0.1+dfsg-3) ...
dbconfig-common: writing config to /etc/dbconfig-common/sympa.conf
apache2: installation seems OK ...
apache2: installation seems OK ...
Reloading web server config: apache2.
DBI connect('sympa:localhost','sympa',...) failed: Can't connect to
local MySQL server through socket '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock' (2)
at /usr/share/sympa/lib/SQLSource.pm line 176
SQLSource::connect() Can't connect to Database DBI:mysql:sympa:localhost
as sympa
List::check_db_connect() Failed to connect to database
DBI connect('dbname=mysql;host=localhost','root',...) failed: Can't
connect to local MySQL server through socket
'/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock' (2) at /usr/share/sympa/lib/SQLSource.pm
line 293
SQLSource::create_db() Cannot connect as root to database
Database sympa defined in sympa.conf has not the right structure or is
unreachable. verify db_xxx parameters in sympa.conf
dpkg: error processing sympa (--configure):
 subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit
status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
 sympa