[arch-general] pacman overwriting files (was Re: dcron 4.2)

[Ray Rashif]

On 11 February 2010 05:03, Dimitrios Apostolou <jimis at gmx.net> wrote:
> On Wed, 10 Feb 2010, Aaron Griffin wrote:
>>
>> On Wed, Feb 10, 2010 at 2:30 PM, Dimitrios Apostolou <jimis at gmx.net>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> On Tue, 12 Jan 2010, Aaron Griffin wrote:
>>>>
>>>> On Tue, Jan 12, 2010 at 5:43 PM, Thomas Bächler <thomas at archlinux.org>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Am 13.01.2010 00:34, schrieb Dimitrios Apostolou:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Since I've been bitten by this, how can I know if the file I modified
>>>>>> is
>>>>>> goint to be overwritten or not, *before* it actually happens? And even
>>>>>> if it is, a .pacsave wouldn't hurt anyone, if I remember correctly
>>>>>> (it's
>>>>>> been some time) I had completely lost my changes, and I had to rewrite
>>>>>> them.
>>>>>
>>>>> pacman -Qii is your friend.
>>>>
>>>> This.
>>>> pacman -Qii dcron will show you all the backup files that pacman will
>>>> take care of.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Guys that thing bit me again: During the big libpng upgrade "initscripts"
>>> package got upgraded too and /etc/rc.{sysinit,shutdown} got overwritten
>>> without notifying me. Because of special changes I've made to mount /var
>>> as
>>> tmpfs, and because I forgot to put the files in the NoUpgrade line of
>>> pacman.conf, the system was unbootable and after fixing it pacman wants
>>> to
>>> download 500MB of packages again (ideas?). :-@
>>>
>>> Can't pacman just emit a big fat warning like: WARNING: /etc/rc.sysinit
>>> USER
>>> CHANGES OVERWRITTEN
>>>
>>> Since this case is extremely rare, the message would appear scarcely. I
>>> can't thing of anything negative for such a feature.
>>
>> I can: extra work for people who are already taxed. You want it? Submit a
>> patch.
>>
>
> OK I like that, from previous answers I thought it was a choice not to fix
> it. I will try to submit the patch.
>
>
> Dimitris

Yep. I got my answer for this a while back when I actually filed a
report for it (or a forum post, can't remember). It's a system file,
you're _not_ supposed to overwrite it. If you do, it's up to you to
take care of upgrades.


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