distributing package updates

[Henning Glawe]

On Tue, Nov 02, 2004 at 07:35:29PM -0500, John Paul Lorenti wrote:
> What happens to questions that need answering, though, such as whether 
> to update a conf file and such? 

"update a conffile" is handled normally by dpkg, not apt. (There now seem to
be a few packages (tetex being one of them) which use "ucf", which asks 
questions about conffiles from the maintainer scripts.)

to make dpkg conffile handling non-interactive, use a /etc/dpkg/dpkg.cfg
containing

force-confold

this does almost always the right thing (means: keep old config if
user-modified).

> I know apt remembers previous answers 
> and can be setup to not ask again, but you may need to change your 

what you are talking about now is debconf.

> answers or answer questions for new packages. It would be great to be 
> able to answer them on one machine in a group of identically configured 
> machines and then copy those answers over for use on the rest of the 
> machines.

cheap method: use the debconf ldap backend.

correct method: don't use debconf, keep complete configuration files in
$FAI/files/
I started to write a fai-do-debconf script but put it on hold because I have
no immediate need for it (I keep complete conffiles in $FAI/files/, so I
always know what is configured how on our computers. Debconf-autogenerated
conffils tend to change from time to time...)

-- 
c u
henning