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  • Re: [SOLVED] Re: old entries in sources.list

    From David Wright@21:1/5 to tomas@tuxteam.de on Fri Jun 20 16:00:01 2025
    On Fri 20 Jun 2025 at 08:28:11 (+0200), tomas@tuxteam.de wrote:
    On Thu, Jun 19, 2025 at 05:40:24PM -0400, Jeffrey Walton wrote:

    [...]

    It might be worth mentioning that if the package owns sources.list,
    then you should not edit it. You should allow the package maintainer
    to edit or replace sources.list. Place your changes in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/.

    tomas@caliban:~$ dpkg -S /etc/apt/sources.list
    dpkg-query: no path found matching pattern /etc/apt/sources.list

    It seems no package "owns" sources.list. Besides, it's in /etc, so by convention it would be a conffile [1], i.e. Debian expects the sysadmin
    to change things and copes with it.

    I don't think that's correct. The term "conffiles" applies to the
    files listed in a package's DEBIAN/conffiles, with their md5sums
    recorded in /var/lib/dpkg/info/<package>.list. When they've been
    modified, upgrading the package gives you a dialogue:

    Configuration file '<CONFFILE>'
    ==> Modified (by you or by a script) since installation.
    ==> Package distributor has shipped an updated version.
    What would you like to do about it ? Your options are:
    Y or I : install the package maintainer's version
    N or O : keep your currently-installed version
    D : show the differences between the versions
    Z : start a shell to examine the situation
    The default action is to keep your current version.
    *** <CONFFILE> (Y/I/N/O/D/Z) [default=N] ? y
    Installing new version of config file <CONFFILE> ...

    So sources.list is a configuration file, but not a conffile.

    Cheers,
    David.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From tomas@tuxteam.de@21:1/5 to David Wright on Fri Jun 20 17:30:02 2025
    On Fri, Jun 20, 2025 at 08:58:58AM -0500, David Wright wrote:
    On Fri 20 Jun 2025 at 08:28:11 (+0200), tomas@tuxteam.de wrote:
    On Thu, Jun 19, 2025 at 05:40:24PM -0400, Jeffrey Walton wrote:

    [...]

    It might be worth mentioning that if the package owns sources.list,
    then you should not edit it. You should allow the package maintainer
    to edit or replace sources.list. Place your changes in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/.

    tomas@caliban:~$ dpkg -S /etc/apt/sources.list
    dpkg-query: no path found matching pattern /etc/apt/sources.list

    It seems no package "owns" sources.list. Besides, it's in /etc, so by convention it would be a conffile [1], i.e. Debian expects the sysadmin
    to change things and copes with it.

    I don't think that's correct. The term "conffiles" applies to the
    files listed in a package's DEBIAN/conffiles, with their md5sums
    recorded in /var/lib/dpkg/info/<package>.list. When they've been
    modified, upgrading the package gives you a dialogue:

    Configuration file '<CONFFILE>'
    ==> Modified (by you or by a script) since installation.
    ==> Package distributor has shipped an updated version.
    What would you like to do about it ? Your options are:
    Y or I : install the package maintainer's version
    N or O : keep your currently-installed version
    D : show the differences between the versions
    Z : start a shell to examine the situation
    The default action is to keep your current version.
    *** <CONFFILE> (Y/I/N/O/D/Z) [default=N] ? y
    Installing new version of config file <CONFFILE> ...

    So sources.list is a configuration file, but not a conffile.

    I've been ambiguous: "so by convention it would be a conffile"
    was a very short form of "...if it were 'owned' by a package".
    But it is not.

    Of course you are right.

    Cheers
    --
    t

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    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)