Confdef

[whiteley]

Description

Provides attribute control for what APT does when it encounters configuration file changes while managing packages. This can avoid errors like the following:

 ==> File on system created by you or by a script.
 ==> File also in package provided by package maintainer.
   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.

The general opinion seems to be that the combination of --force-confdef and --force-confold is the safest option for unattended installs but I left the default behavior as it was. Without setting any attributes it will still crash out with the above type error.

More information about the options is available from man dpkg, I tried to pare the descriptions down to something useful in the README.

Check List

• [X] All tests pass. See https://github.com/chef-cookbooks/community_cookbook_documentation/blob/master/TESTING.MD
• [X] New functionality includes testing.
• [X] New functionality has been documented in the README if applicable
• [X] All commits have been signed for the Developer Certificate of Origin. See https://github.com/chef-cookbooks/community_cookbook_documentation/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.MD

[tas50]

@whiteley You'll need to sign these commits off for the DCO before we can merge this in.

[thommay]

We'll be fixing this in chef/chef#5698 in the next month or two. (but that's not to say this is bad for old versions)

[whiteley]

@thommay awesome, thanks for the info.

[tas50]

Thanks for the specs