Re: [gentoo-user] Cleaning redundant configuration files

[Neil Bothwick]

On Thu, 2 Jun 2011 17:26:44 +0100, David W Noon wrote:

> My issue is with your "I don't know what this is," application.
>
> Portage knows exactly what a given configuration file is, as the
> package still owns the file.  The way it detects that the file has been
> customized is that the MD5 checksum and/or file size differ from that
> stored in the package manifest.
>
> As an example, here is the manifest for sys-apps/mlocate:

[snip]
> Now, nearly everybody modifies /etc/updatedb.conf.  This does not
> remove that name from mlocate's manifest.  So, Portage knows precisely
> to which package the file belongs.  Hence I think your assertion of "I
> don't know what this is," is specious.

You have picked an excellent example, because mlocate is not the package
that owns or has owned /etc/updatedb.conf, slocate does too. If the
checksum does not match, portage does not know with certainty that the
file belongs to that package, all it knows is that the file has a name in
common with a file installed by that package.

In fact, it is most likely that that file was never owned by mlocate, on
most systems it would have been installed by slocate, modified by the
user, left in place when slocate was unmerged and not overwritten when
mlocate was installed. So you have a file that was installed by one
package that you want another package to uninstall.

There are other examples of different packages, usually doing the same
job and mutually blocking, that share config file names. That is why
portage cannot sanely remove a file that just happens to have the same
name as a file that may have been installed by the package in question,
even though it does not have the same contents as that package's version
of the file.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

Top Oxymorons Number 45: Resident alien