pacnew files appears in filesytem after upgrade. What do YOU do ?

niller · 2008-02-17 13:43:56

Hi all

Having great fun with ArchLinux for the last two weeks now, and really enjoy this distro !!

Did a system upgrade yesterday and everything went fine.

But when I'm in console Emacs suddenly behaves strangely when typing danish characters :-/

I looked in /etc for consulting the locale files and discovered some new files with a .pacnew extension.

I did a

grep pacnew /var/log/pacman.log

and gets this

[2008-02-04 09:20] >>> when merging the pacnew file with your old configuration.
[2008-02-04 09:48] warning: /etc/locale.gen installed as /etc/locale.gen.pacnew
[2008-02-04 09:48]   ==> Check /etc/locale.gen.pacnew for new supported locales
[2008-02-04 09:48] warning: /etc/profile installed as /etc/profile.pacnew
[2008-02-04 09:48] warning: /etc/rc.conf installed as /etc/rc.conf.pacnew
[2008-02-04 09:48] See /etc/crypttab(.pacnew) for more information.
[2008-02-04 09:49] warning: /etc/logrotate.conf installed as /etc/logrotate.conf.pacnew
[2008-02-04 09:49] warning: /etc/nanorc installed as /etc/nanorc.pacnew

The question is now:

What should I do with this ?? I guess that the /etc/locale.gen.pacnew is to blame for emacs character problems ??

What do YOU do ??

(please have in mind that I am not a emacs expert :-)

shining · 2008-02-17 14:05:59

niller wrote:

What do YOU do ??

If it's a config file I edited in the past, I use vimdiff for merging both files.
If not, I simply overwrite the old config file by the .pacnew one.

Cerebral · 2008-02-17 14:52:50

Just like Shining - I manually merge. I take a look at what's new in the .pacnew file, and if I want it in my current config, merge it over.

V01D · 2008-03-11 15:29:29

Is there a way to see the changes between the old config file (as installed by the previous package version) and the new one? Making a diff between the currently modified version and the new one doesn't clearly show what was changed. For example, I just upgraded filesystem and there was a group.pacnew, with this diff:

--- group       2008-03-11 13:19:10.000000000 -0200
+++ group.pacnew        2008-03-11 13:19:09.000000000 -0200
@@ -8,28 +8,19 @@
 lp::7:daemon
 mem::8:
 kmem::9:
-wheel::10:root,v01d
+wheel::10:root
 ftp::11:
 mail::12:
-log::19:root,v01d
+uucp::14:
+log::19:root
 smmsp::25:
 games::50:
 network:x:90:
-video:x:91:v01d
-audio::92:v01d
-optical::93:hal,v01d
-floppy:x:94:hal
-storage:x:95:hal
+video:x:91:
+audio::92:
+optical::93:
+floppy:x:94:
+storage:x:95:
 power:x:98:
 nobody::99:
 users::100:
-locate:x:21:
-dbus:x:81:
-avahi:x:84:
-hal:x:82:
-camera:x:97:v01d
-scanner:x:96:
-kvm:x:78:v01d
-postgres:x:88:
-clamav:x:64:
-uucp:x:14:

shining · 2008-03-11 15:41:58

No, you can't do that. Or well, if you still had the old package around in your cache, you could extract manually the old config file from it.
But otherwise, about the group file, it might look a bit tricky at first sight, but it isn't really.
1) First kind of changes :
-wheel::10:root,v01d
+wheel::10:root

That's because you added your user, you dont want to revert that. Same for hal and stuff.

2) second kind :
-locate:x:21:
-dbus:x:81:

These groups were added when installing packages. you dont want to remove them either

3) others :
+uucp::14:
-uucp:x:14:

Well, that's the real change that happened, uucp was added. Though for some reason, you already had it

Though, it's probably easier to find it using webcvs :
http://cvs.archlinux.org/cgi-bin/viewcv … ag=CURRENT

Last edited by shining (2008-03-11 15:42:45)

stonecrest · 2008-03-12 03:57:37

shining wrote:

niller wrote:
What do YOU do ??
If it's a config file I edited in the past, I use vimdiff for merging both files.
If not, I simply overwrite the old config file by the .pacnew one.

I thought you only get a pacnew if you had made changes to the file. Or am I confused?

peart · 2008-03-12 04:09:48

Either we're both wrong or both confused

Mr Green · 2008-03-12 06:33:56

pacnew are files that are new versions of certain config files [arch related ones!] the best thing is to check them for changes then remove them once your done .....

pacman will not overwrite important config files such as rc.conf as it would break peoples systems, so just check for changes then remove then HTH

tigrmesh · 2008-03-12 08:03:08

stonecrest wrote:

I thought you only get a pacnew if you had made changes to the file. Or am I confused?

man pacman goes into this in some detail.

shining · 2008-03-12 10:36:35

stonecrest wrote:

shining wrote:
niller wrote:
What do YOU do ??
If it's a config file I edited in the past, I use vimdiff for merging both files.
If not, I simply overwrite the old config file by the .pacnew one.
I thought you only get a pacnew if you had made changes to the file. Or am I confused?

No you are not confused, but they are exceptions. Like some times last year, because of a bug concerning files in NoUpgrade, we had to reset all md5sums of these files.
And same when a file is relocated, like recently /etc/profile which moved from bash to filesystem.

But you are right, in the general case, it does not happen, so I vimdiff all .pacnew files I get
I also find the very simple pacdiff useful when there are several of them.

Last edited by shining (2008-03-12 10:38:31)

awagner · 2008-03-12 10:44:06

What do you think of a weekly cronjob that does:

#/bin/sh
/usr/bin/find / -name *.pacnew

I'm assuming that the stdout of that command will be mailed automatically by cron to admin/me...

(I keep postponing and then forgetting to look after those files.)

While I'm at it, how would I re-nice that command and how would I make it search pacsave (and possibly other?) files? (I could not see from man find whether I really would have to have a second find command or if there's a possibility to add a second pattern to that command.)

shining · 2008-03-12 10:56:55

Try find / -name "*.pacnew" -o -name "*.pacsave"
config files are usually in /etc/ . You can also get some in /opt (eg kde or kdemod) and in /boot (grub)
It should not be necessary to look at the whole / though.

Alternatives : find /etc |grep -E '\.pacsave$|\.pacnew$'

But the pacman output is logged in /var/log/pacman.log , so simply do : grep pacnew /var/log/pacman.log

Finally, I don't see the point of any of these commands. You should always look at pacman output when using it. If there are .pacnew / .pacsave files, they will be displayed, and you should take care of them right after (well, .pacnew at least).

schivmeister · 2008-03-12 13:21:56

Depending on my mood, I locate or find .pacnew, -, ~, .pacsave and all other blingy files. I diff em, then if I notice something new, I open a pair in my Yakuake split windows after which it's all good ol' typin'. Arch packagers (and packages) are intelligent, they will inform you when it's time for you to pay attention.

autonymous · 2008-03-13 13:47:02

Not to say that I really intend to steal everything from another distro, but Gentoo DOES have a fairly usable mechanism for dealing with just this sort of thing:

etc-update

Anybody interested in grafting it for our purposes?

Last edited by autonymous (2008-03-13 13:48:31)

brebs · 2008-03-13 15:12:48

etc-update went away with the dinosaurs. The Gentoo relevant-to-this-century configuration update tool is dispatch-conf.

schivmeister · 2008-03-14 15:07:12

autonymous wrote:

Not to say that I really intend to steal everything from another distro, but Gentoo DOES have a fairly usable mechanism for dealing with just this sort of thing:
etc-update
Anybody interested in grafting it for our purposes?

Not of significant aid to us. Defeats the whole purpose of control, as in fact dispatch-conf is supposed to be run with care. Notice the little warning every time? Opting for auto-merge automatically every automaday isn't really automatistic. Yeah, there are many cases where merging in new lines wouldn't be bad - especially if you keep things stock - but there also cases where it proves to be counter-intuitive.

Ramses de Norre · 2008-03-14 15:35:35

shining wrote:

niller wrote:
What do YOU do ??
If it's a config file I edited in the past, I use vimdiff for merging both files.
If not, I simply overwrite the old config file by the .pacnew one.

Vimdiff is fantastic I didn't knew this feature yet..

F · 2008-03-14 16:22:12

use vimdiff to compare the files, then manually merge or delete as needed.

Arch Linux

#1 2008-02-17 13:43:56

pacnew files appears in filesytem after upgrade. What do YOU do ?

#2 2008-02-17 14:05:59

Re: pacnew files appears in filesytem after upgrade. What do YOU do ?

#3 2008-02-17 14:52:50

Re: pacnew files appears in filesytem after upgrade. What do YOU do ?

#4 2008-03-11 15:29:29

Re: pacnew files appears in filesytem after upgrade. What do YOU do ?

#5 2008-03-11 15:41:58

Re: pacnew files appears in filesytem after upgrade. What do YOU do ?

#6 2008-03-12 03:57:37

Re: pacnew files appears in filesytem after upgrade. What do YOU do ?

#7 2008-03-12 04:09:48

Re: pacnew files appears in filesytem after upgrade. What do YOU do ?

#8 2008-03-12 06:33:56

Re: pacnew files appears in filesytem after upgrade. What do YOU do ?

#9 2008-03-12 08:03:08

Re: pacnew files appears in filesytem after upgrade. What do YOU do ?

#10 2008-03-12 10:36:35

Re: pacnew files appears in filesytem after upgrade. What do YOU do ?

#11 2008-03-12 10:44:06

Re: pacnew files appears in filesytem after upgrade. What do YOU do ?

#12 2008-03-12 10:56:55

Re: pacnew files appears in filesytem after upgrade. What do YOU do ?

#13 2008-03-12 13:21:56

Re: pacnew files appears in filesytem after upgrade. What do YOU do ?

#14 2008-03-13 13:47:02

Re: pacnew files appears in filesytem after upgrade. What do YOU do ?

#15 2008-03-13 15:12:48

Re: pacnew files appears in filesytem after upgrade. What do YOU do ?

#16 2008-03-14 15:07:12

Re: pacnew files appears in filesytem after upgrade. What do YOU do ?

#17 2008-03-14 15:35:35

Re: pacnew files appears in filesytem after upgrade. What do YOU do ?

#18 2008-03-14 16:22:12

Re: pacnew files appears in filesytem after upgrade. What do YOU do ?

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