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Bug 464662 - quickpkg --include-config=y breaks config file protection
Summary: quickpkg --include-config=y breaks config file protection
Status: CONFIRMED
Alias: None
Product: Portage Development
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Binary packages support (show other bugs)
Hardware: All Linux
: Normal normal (vote)
Assignee: Portage team
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
: 586274 (view as bug list)
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2013-04-05 01:25 UTC by Dave Armstrong
Modified: 2022-10-20 02:44 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

See Also:
Package list:
Runtime testing required: ---


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Description Dave Armstrong 2013-04-05 01:25:09 UTC
Version of portage: sys-apps/portage-2.2.0_alpha171

When binary packages that have been created by "quickpkg --include-config=y" are merged, files within the scope of CONFIG_PROTECT are treated as "unmodified" by portage even if they had been modified on the host system prior to package creation.  As a consequence, all files in a given package will be overwritten or removed during upgrade/reinstall or unmerge operations, respectively, unless they have changed since the binary was merged.

This happens because /var/lib/portage/config is populated with current md5 hash values of the newly installed files.  A necessary prerequisite is that "config-protect-if-modified" is set in $FEATURES, which is the default.

This seems like a pretty severe bug to me.  Consider for example:

quickpkg --include-config=y <list of all installed atoms>
emerge -eK world
emerge -e world

The second emerge would clobber all existing config files (unless "config-protect-if-modified" is explicitly unset in FEATURES).

I'm not familiar with the internal details of portage, so I can't suggest an optimal method of handling the issue.  However,  I observe that md5 hashes from the original files are preserved in /var/db/pkg/${CATEGORY}/${PN}-${PVR}/CONTENTS.  Perhaps those could be taken into account.  The current handling of protected files isn't very robust and is somewhat dangerous.
Comment 1 Zac Medico gentoo-dev 2013-04-05 03:12:14 UTC
I don't see any convenient way to protect against this kind of problem. The same kind of problem also prevents quickpkg --include-unmodified-config from knowing if a config file was modified by a user prior to a previous quickpkg/install cycle (that's why it's disabled be default, just like --include-config is).

We can add warnings about these behaviors to the documentation for both options. I think that would be good enough. Because of quickpkg's inherent flaws, I would advise people to avoid using it whenever possible, and to use FEATURES=buildpkg instead.
Comment 2 Zac Medico gentoo-dev 2017-10-14 20:00:44 UTC
*** Bug 586274 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***