[3213] in RedHat Linux List
Re: RPM clobbers files
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Otto Hammersmith)
Thu Nov 7 16:54:17 1996
From: Otto Hammersmith <ohammers@cu-online.com>
To: redhat-list@redhat.com
Date: Thu, 7 Nov 1996 13:42:59 -0600 (CST)
In-Reply-To: <199611071833.SAA19874@weasel.mmm.co.uk> from "Tim Baverstock" at Nov 7, 96 06:33:28 pm
Resent-From: redhat-list@redhat.com
Reply-To: redhat-list@redhat.com
Tim Baverstock wrote:
>
>
> Donnie Barnes wrote:
> > RPM will never query the user. I hasten to say "never", but that is
> > a design decision that has been made. RPM should never be interactive.
>
> I'd say that's a wholly defensible position. RPM seems like a classic Unix
> toolbox command.
I agree with it as well... I just wanted to get my point across, that
it woudln't necesarrily have to save gigabytes of useless binaries. :)
> Otto Hammersmith <ohammers@cu-online.com> wrote:
> > Okay, then consider it a conflict (as long as it's not a known config
> > file... i.e., listed in %config) and don't install the package.
> >
> > Then the user can install the rpm with --force to overwrite, or
> > another option to save all conflicting files (--save-all-conflicts or
> > something).
>
> This seems like a very elegant and safe-fail solution to me: RPM becomes
> conservative, only clobbering what it believes it knows about and sulking
> about files it doesn't recognise or whose modification times have mysteriously
> changed.
>
> The %config directive would then become a `this file may look a little bit
> screwy - don't mess with' directive. :)
I don't think that's possible... there is still the chance that confi
file formats will change.
> Perhaps provision could be made to obtain a list of the conflicting files a
> package would clobber (with sizes)? rpm -qpk
>
> Perhaps it would be handy to obtain a list of all such conflicts vs all
> packages, so you can include config files in a sped-up backup: -qack
I like this idea.
It'd also be useful to package everything that changed up into an
rpm. It would make for easy custom configurations. And rpm as it is
should handle the "overlaping" package quite well.
This was one of the nice things about Solaris... you could have custom
installation setups. So, a machine crashes you boot it off the
network, reinstall from the copy of the CD on the NFS server and then
install the customized things as well. I never did figure out how to
manage it (the documentation isn't all that great in those sections
:-/) but I have worked with a company that was reselling sparc boxes
with Solaris, and all they had to do was drop a new box onto the local
network and off it went.
> Hmm. Could you sneak in a no-op -u option, so we could type rpm -quack ?
You're a sicko.
;)
--
-Otto
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