[BlueOnyx:10084] Re: Conf files replaced by update

[Michael Stauber]

Hi Stephanie,

> I get Greg/Michael's point. What is frustrating to me about the conf file
> overwriting I often see a conf file written appended with .rpmnew if an
> existing conf file is being respected or the old one being moved to
> .rpmold if a conf file is replacing the older.

Yes, the RPM mechanisms take care of these things nicely. That is true. But 
some of our config file changes (like the ones dealing with Sendmail) are done 
through constructors or handlers, some through RPM %triggers. So it is done 
outside of the usual RPM mechanisms.

After all, it has to be done out of RPM mechanisms, as a file owned by one RPM 
may not be modified or replaced by another RPM, which applies for sendmail.cf 
and sendmail.mc. They're owned by the "sendmail" RPM, so the BlueOnyx RPMs can 
only touch them by going a little round about such as %post install scripts, 
%triggers or relying on constructors to do the job when CCEd is restarted.

Could we modify the constructors or scripts to keep backups of configs they 
replace? Sure. However: Changes to sendmail.mc / sendmail.cf usually only 
happen when base-blueonyx.mod is updated, so I thought we were safe on this 
one. Because it wasn't updated. But I overlooked that base-maillist.mod and 
base-mailman.mod also run the initSendmail.sh script that triggers the 
changes. 

This update was already massive enough that I had to keep notes of what could 
break if it wasn't done right. It turned out to be a long list and playing 
nice with sensibilities about Sendmail wasn't on it. Our scripts are smart 
enough to push changes to replaced sendmail.mc and sendmail.cf that were done 
through the GUI. But finding a way that retains any other manually done 
changes is way too much effort.

> The latter case is particularly important to me since just overwriting conf
> files without saving a backup of the one being overwritten is way beyond
> rude.

That could be. But we still follow the appliance idea where certain things 
should either be "hands off", or have the sticker "modify at your own risk" 
attached to it.

OK, I can (and will) modify base-blueonyx.mod's initSendmail.sh script to keep 
a backup copy of sendmail.cf and sendmail.mc when it replaces them. Not right 
now, but sometime down the road. But with that we're back in square one: When 
that RPM gets installed, your current sendmail config will be replaced once 
again. Which isn't really perfect either <sigh>.

-- 
With best regards

Michael Stauber