[pacman-dev] /etc/fstab rewritten by pacman!

[Dan McGee]

On 4/10/07, Roman Kyrylych <roman.kyrylych at gmail.com> wrote:
> Few hours ago I did an update on my server via ssh.
> First I updated pacman from 3.0.0 to 3.0.1, then did -Su.
> One of packages was filesystem-0.8-2.
> I don't have etc/fstab in NoUpgrade since 2.9.8.
> Then some idiot rebooted server before I checked .pacnew files etc.
> One of my coworker called my by cellphone (I also noticed PuTTY became
> inactive).
> When I get to my second job (where server is located) - I saw that
> /etc/fstab is rewritten with package's default, though pacman also
> created fstab.pacnew.
> Any ideas why did this happen?

I wonder if this is biting us:
http://www.archlinux.org/pipermail/pacman-dev/2006-December/000838.html

Roman, before you update, it would be interesting to get the three
different md5sums and see if this is the case. I'm just super
surprised that this never happened to me in all of my pacman updates.

If this is it, then these should be the steps to reproduce (note that
these reports are starting at step 5, the other stuff happened in the
past):
1. Install a package that had a NoUpgrade line.
2. Edit a backup file.
3. Upgrade the package, causing the local md5sum to be written to the
DB (instead of the original md5sum from the new package).
4. Do NOT edit the file again, and remove the NoUpgrade line from pacman.conf.
5. Upgrade the package, causing the 'original' and 'old' md5sum to be
identical, which allows pacman to write an upgraded file over your
custom config.

Possible fixes:
1. Put NoUpgrade lines back in. This is hacky/ugly IMO.
2. Back up all config files that are to be overwritten as .pacold
files, even if they are supposedly legal candidates for overwriting.
This will cause some clutter on systems, however, but will ensure no
configurations are lost (although they would be moved).

Thoughts? Am I right on this? I wasn't deep enough in pacman yet when
this issue came up.

-Dan