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

[Thomas Bächler]

Am 10.02.2010 21:30, schrieb Dimitrios Apostolou:
> 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.

This will definitely not happen. pacman will only notify you on files
that are marked as "backup" in the package and thus listed in pacman
-Qii! All other will be overwritten without a warning (pacman doesn't
know you modified them). rc.{sysinit,shutdown} are not supposed to be
modified by the user - if you still want to do that, the NoUpgrade
feature of pacman will do the job, but then you are completely on your
own (Arch gives you all freedom you want, as long as you know you and
only you are to blame for problems)!

You should try to make your changes work inside Arch:
1) If your changes are general enough to make it into the mainstream
initscripts as a feature (or an optional one), submit a feature request
with a patch against latest git.
2) If your changes are for local usage only, try to integrate them with
the new initscripts hooks system. You can also request to add more hooks
to be added in initscripts, just open a feature request. The hooks
system is explained in the comments in /etc/rc.d/functions.

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