On Fri, Aug 16, simonizor wrote:

This is pretty confusing... does this apply to all of openSUSE or? I really hope it doesn't. I for one do not support dropping /etc entirely and forcing people not using atomic updates to use /usr/etc which you have said should not be modified.

If you read the rationale: this helps us on all kind of updates, even plain ones with RPM. We had in the last months again enough problems/bug reports of not working/insecure systems, since users/admins ignored *.rpmsave and *.rpmnew files and did not merge the configuration files after an update. This proposal should help with this and make the user experience on updates much better. And this change will come, if we do something or not. The systemd people are working on the same and are in contact with several upstream projects already to change their code. The only difference is, they perfer to clobber /usr/lib even more, why we try to cleanup the filesystem (especially /usr/lib) at the same time. If you want to make changes, you still have to do them in /etc. Thorsten -- Thorsten Kukuk, Distinguished Engineer, Senior Architect SLES & MicroOS SUSE Linux GmbH, Maxfeldstr. 5, 90409 Nuernberg, Germany GF: Felix Imendoerffer, Mary Higgins, Sri Rasiah, HRB 21284 (AG Nuernberg) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org

On Friday, August 16, 2019 8:45:31 AM CDT, simonizor wrote:

...

If you read the rationale: this helps us on all kind of updates, even plain ones with RPM. We had in the last months again enough problems/bug reports of not working/insecure systems, since users/admins ignored *.rpmsave and *.rpmnew files and did not merge the configuration files after an update. This proposal should help with this and make the user experience on updates much better.

How does this solve that? I can still place a configuration file in /etc with this proposal and ignore *.rpmsave and *.rpmnew.

Also, I am totally one of the people that ignores these files. Why? There's little to no notification that they have been created, nothing telling me what changes have been made, etc. By the time I realize they're even there, months could have passed since they were created. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org

On 16/08/2019 15.53, simonizor wrote:

On Friday, August 16, 2019 8:45:31 AM CDT, simonizor wrote:

...

...

If you read the rationale: this helps us on all kind of updates, even plain ones with RPM. We had in the last months again enough problems/bug reports of not working/insecure systems, since users/admins ignored *.rpmsave and *.rpmnew files and did not merge the configuration files after an update. This proposal should help with this and make the user experience on updates much better.

How does this solve that?  I can still place a configuration file in /etc with this proposal and ignore *.rpmsave and *.rpmnew.

Also, I am totally one of the people that ignores these files.  Why?  There's little to no notification that they have been created, nothing telling me what changes have been made, etc.  By the time I realize they're even there, months could have passed since they were created.

There was a service that run on boot that searched for those files and told the admin, but it has been removed. I think that going back more years, it emailed root as well. Now, you have to run "rpmconfigcheck" manually. I documented this on the wiki. -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 15.0 x86_64 at Telcontar)

On 22/08/2019 20.13, Wolfgang Bauer wrote:
> Am Samstag, 17. August 2019, 10:55:44 schrieb Carlos E. R.:
>> There was a service that run on boot that searched for those files and
>> told the admin, but it has been removed. I think that going back more
>> years, it emailed root as well.
>>
>> Now, you have to run "rpmconfigcheck" manually. I documented this on the
>> wiki.
> Well, the service does still exist:
> $ systemctl status rpmconfigcheck
> * rpmconfigcheck.service - Scan for unresolved .rpmnew, .rpmorig, and .rpmsave 
> files
>    Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/rpmconfigcheck.service; disabled; 
> vendor preset: disabled)
>    Active: inactive (dead)
> 
> (it is disabled by default, but that's the case since years if not a decade, 
> AFAIK)

Only after systemd deployment. Previous to that the default was enabled.

> 
> It doesn't notify anybody though AFAICS, the output should go to the 
> journal/syslog and should also be visible if you run "systemctl status 
> rpmconfigcheck" (might be necessary to do that as root though).

It goes to a file.


> I don't think it ever supported sending emails, though it might be possible to 
> configure journald or the used syslog daemon to do that.

I remember that long ago root got emails about some configuration
changes, but I do not remember if this was one of them.


Searching on my root (mail) folder I see them:


+++.......................
Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2014 19:54:40 +0200
From: root 
To: root@telcontar.valinor
Subject: rpm config chech run


Please check the following files (see /var/adm/rpmconfigcheck):
    /etc/clamd.conf.rpmnew
    /etc/init.d/jexec.rpmsave
    /etc/init.d/jexec.rpmsave
    /etc/logrotate.d/apache2.rpmnew
    /etc/pam.d/common-password.rpmnew
    /etc/pam.d/common-session.rpmnew
    /etc/texmf/web2c/fmtutil.cnf.rpmnew
    /etc/texmf/web2c/updmap.cfg.rpmsave
    /etc/updatedb.conf.rpmnew
    /usr/share/kde4/config/kdm/kdmrc.rpmnew
.......................++-


Only that year. I can't say if it was my doing or it came from the distro.


> 
> I had a quick look at the current rpmconfigcheck script itself, it does add a 
> message to /var/log/update-messages, which would be displayed by YaST/zypper 
> if you do updates I think (it will not be run during updates though, no idea 
> if that was different in the past).


-- 
Cheers / Saludos,

		Carlos E. R.
		(from 15.0 x86_64 at Telcontar)

On 22/08/2019 21.48, Thorsten Kukuk wrote:

On Thu, Aug 22, Carlos E. R. wrote:

...

On 22/08/2019 20.13, Wolfgang Bauer wrote:

...

...

(it is disabled by default, but that's the case since years if not a decade, AFAIK)

Only after systemd deployment. Previous to that the default was enabled.

systemd was deployed 2003? 7 years before systemd development started? I want to have that time machine!

rpmconfigcheck isn't enabled now for 16 years: ------------------------------------------------------------------- Tue Sep 23 16:28:12 CEST 2003 - mls@suse.de

- really disable rpmconfigcheck

Thorsten

Well, dunno, but my machines had it enabled and got it disabled when systemd came. -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 15.0 x86_64 at Telcontar)

Am 16.08.19 um 17:04 schrieb Dominique Leuenberger / DimStar:

I'd clearly discourage the use of %config there. Using %config we only move the problem leadnig to bug reports from /etc to /usr/etc.

Calling the files 'application default settings' rather than 'config files' might help to clearly distinguish between their usecases.

If we clearly state it's not config files, any such bug report could be rejected with "invalid: you modified system files, no config files"

And a comment in each of these "application default settings" files stating that it must not be modified, and where the modifications should be placed would certainly be helpful ;-) -- Stefan Seyfried "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled." -- Richard Feynman -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org

On Sat, Aug 17, Jan Engelhardt wrote:

...

We develop currently an universal, really flexible config file parser for config files more or less compatible with the ini file format, it's libeconf: https://github.com/parlt91/libeconf

Is there a shortage of ini parser libraries around, or did I miss something? (libini_config, libiniparser, the-unnamed?-parser-from-samba, the-other-thing-with-augeas-lenses)

And which of them offers any of the functionality we need for this proposal? Thorsten -- Thorsten Kukuk, Distinguished Engineer, Senior Architect SLES & MicroOS SUSE Linux GmbH, Maxfeldstr. 5, 90409 Nuernberg, Germany GF: Felix Imendoerffer, Mary Higgins, Sri Rasiah, HRB 21284 (AG Nuernberg) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org

On Sat, Aug 17, Jan Engelhardt wrote:

On Saturday 2019-08-17 05:35, Thorsten Kukuk wrote:

...

On Sat, Aug 17, Jan Engelhardt wrote:

...

...

We develop currently an universal, really flexible config file parser for config files more or less compatible with the ini file format, it's libeconf: https://github.com/parlt91/libeconf

Is there a shortage of ini parser libraries around, or did I miss something? (libini_config, libiniparser, the-unnamed?-parser-from-samba, the-other-thing-with-augeas-lenses)

And which of them offers any of the functionality we need for this proposal?

What functionality do you mean?

To support the proposal and merge the files during reading like systemd is doing? For easier adjustment of applications? libeconf is clearly not to replace the used config file library with another one with the same functionality. Thorsten -- Thorsten Kukuk, Distinguished Engineer, Senior Architect SLES & MicroOS SUSE Linux GmbH, Maxfeldstr. 5, 90409 Nuernberg, Germany GF: Felix Imendoerffer, Mary Higgins, Sri Rasiah, HRB 21284 (AG Nuernberg) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org

Am 17.08.19 um 11:02 schrieb Carlos E. R.:

For example, if I have to look at both /usr/etc/postfix/main.cf and /etc/postfix/main.cf, which is a big file, when the local modifications can be in different order than the defaults, it will be a nightmare to know the actual value of any random setting.

view: postconf | less edit: postconf -e foo=bar There would be nothing different than now ;-) nobody should edit main.cf manually anyway. -- Stefan Seyfried "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled." -- Richard Feynman -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org

Am 17.08.19 um 11:39 schrieb Carlos E. R.:

On 17/08/2019 11.06, Stefan Seyfried wrote:>> nobody should edit main.cf manually anyway.

Many do. I do. Would you use YaST instead? I only use it once in the lifetime of the system.

Why not just use postconf instead of editing main.cf? I do not even have yast installed on most of my systems after initial configuration. -- Stefan Seyfried "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled." -- Richard Feynman -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org

On Sat, Aug 17, Carlos E. R. wrote:

which is very specific to postfix, and needs looking at a terminal for running the command and another for the editor.

While key/value pair configuration files are very common, not even there is a "standard". Which means: the solution for every application will be different, like the file formats are: key/value, xml, json, yaml, and whatever some developer created. So, no, there will never be one tool able to handle the configuration files of all applications. Thorsten -- Thorsten Kukuk, Distinguished Engineer, Senior Architect SLES & MicroOS SUSE Linux GmbH, Maxfeldstr. 5, 90409 Nuernberg, Germany GF: Felix Imendoerffer, Mary Higgins, Sri Rasiah, HRB 21284 (AG Nuernberg) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org

On Sat, Aug 17, Carlos E. R. wrote:

As admin, I see very problematic having defaults in one place and actual local configuration in another. It makes difficult for the admin to know the actual configuration.

It always depends. If you have to modify only 1-2 variables, a file with only this 1-2 modifications is much easier to maintain und gives you a much better overview over the changes than a file with 10.000 lines where you changed 1-2 variables.

Do we have editors that would load both files and present the admin with the actual configuration? If we don't, I see the proposal as worse that the current status.

The good think on opensource is: if you need something and there is nothing, start write it :) Nearly every editor can show you two files togher, highlight the changes, etc. Thorsten -- Thorsten Kukuk, Distinguished Engineer, Senior Architect SLES & MicroOS SUSE Linux GmbH, Maxfeldstr. 5, 90409 Nuernberg, Germany GF: Felix Imendoerffer, Mary Higgins, Sri Rasiah, HRB 21284 (AG Nuernberg) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org

Why not using meld ? Am Thu, 22 Aug 2019 21:28:45 +0200 schrieb "Carlos E. R." :

On 17/08/2019 12.29, Thorsten Kukuk wrote:

...

On Sat, Aug 17, Carlos E. R. wrote:

...

As admin, I see very problematic having defaults in one place and actual local configuration in another. It makes difficult for the admin to know the actual configuration.

It always depends. If you have to modify only 1-2 variables, a file with only this 1-2 modifications is much easier to maintain und gives you a much better overview over the changes than a file with 10.000 lines where you changed 1-2 variables.

That is true. I mark changes with my initials.

...

...

Do we have editors that would load both files and present the admin with the actual configuration? If we don't, I see the proposal as worse that the current status.

The good think on opensource is: if you need something and there is nothing, start write it :)

Only if you are a developer with the proper skills (for editors). I am not. And I don't have the money to pay one ;-)

Often some things takes decades to appear, others are made once then they rot and disappear.

...

Nearly every editor can show you two files togher, highlight the changes, etc.

I can't think of any. Joe or mcedit don't do that.

-- Mit freundlichen Grüßen Best Regards Peter Ragosch -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org