Re: postinstall wiped out my /etc/rc changes

[Alan Barrett <apb%cequrux.com@localhost>]

On Fri, 02 May 2008, Steven M. Bellovin wrote:
> It isn't obvious -- at least not to me -- which files in /etc are
> "owned" by the system (and hence are fair game for auto-replacement),
> and which are owned by the administrator.

I don't think any files in /etc are fair game for auto-replacement.  If
any automatic process is replacing files in /etc, I'd call that a bug.

Manually invoking a command like "postinstall fix" is not "automatic" in
my book.  Having etcupdate print a suggestion that you might want to run
postinstall fix is still not automatic.

Having sysinst run "postinstall fix" *is* automatic, and I have just
noticed that sysinst suffers from that bug.  At the very least, it
should be changed to display the results from "postinstall check"
and prompt before running "postinstall fix".  I'd prefer it to use
etcupdate, which is much safer, thought it requires much more help from
the user.

--apb (Alan Barrett)