[Pkg-sympa-devel] Bug#864546: sympa: shipped file missing after upgrade from jessie to stretch: /etc/sympa/sympa.conf-smime.in

[Stefan Hornburg (Racke)]

On 06/10/2017 03:06 PM, Stefan Hornburg (Racke) wrote:
> On 06/10/2017 02:02 PM, Andreas Beckmann wrote:
>> Package: sympa
>> Version: 6.2.16~dfsg-3
>> Severity: serious
>> User: debian-qa at lists.debian.org
>> Usertags: piuparts
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> during a test with piuparts I noticed your package modifies conffiles.
>> This is forbidden by the policy, see
>> https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-files.html#s-config-files
>>
>> 10.7.3: "[...] The easy way to achieve this behavior is to make the
>> configuration file a conffile. [...] This implies that the default
>> version will be part of the package distribution, and must not be
>> modified by the maintainer scripts during installation (or at any
>> other time)."
>>
>> Note that once a package ships a modified version of that conffile,
>> dpkg will prompt the user for an action how to handle the upgrade of
>> this modified conffile (that was not modified by the user).
>>
>> Further in 10.7.3: "[...] must not ask unnecessary questions
>> (particularly during upgrades) [...]"
>>
>> If a configuration file is customized by a maintainer script after
>> having asked some debconf questions, it may not be marked as a
>> conffile. Instead a template could be installed in /usr/share and used
>> by the postinst script to fill in the custom values and create (or
>> update) the configuration file (preserving any user modifications!).
>> This file must be removed during postrm purge.
>> ucf(1) may help with these tasks.
>> See also https://wiki.debian.org/DpkgConffileHandling
>>
>> In https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2012/09/msg00412.html and
>> followups it has been agreed that these bugs are to be filed with
>> severity serious.
>>
>> debsums reports modification of the following files,
>> from the attached log (scroll to the bottom...):
>>
>> 3m56.7s ERROR: FAIL: debsums reports modifications inside the chroot:
>>   debsums: missing file /etc/sympa/sympa.conf-smime.in (from sympa package)
>>
>>
>> If the conffile is actually obsolete, please use
>>   dpkg-maintscript-helper rm_conffile
>> to remove it properly (also from dpkg's database).
>>
> 
> This file looks like an artifact, so we are probably going to remove it.
> 
> Regards
>            Racke
> 

It is definitely an artifact, as the SMIME configuration was integrated into
main configuration file.

Thanks for your hint above how to deal with it.

Regards
        Racke

>>
>> cheers,
>>
>> Andreas
>>
> 
> 


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