"etc-update --automode -9" will ask for file removal since it by default uses rm -i. There's a workaround: Setting rm_opts in /etc/etc-update.conf, but that's changing behaviour of other automodes. The core of the problem is wrong ordering of option parsing and config parsing: 731 --automode) parse_automode_flag $2 && shift || usage 1 "Invalid mode '$2'";; this parses the --automode flag and runs the parse_automode_flag function that sets DELETE_ALL and rm_opts then: 781 cfg_vars=( 784 rm_opts 793 eval ${cfg_vars[@]/%/=} So here the config file is evaluated and overwrites the settings. The fix would be to move this whole block above the cli option parsing...
Created attachment 517132 [details, diff] etc-update: fix automode -9 handling of rm_opts Walked into the same issue today. Since somebody else also seems to have walked into the same issue with "etc-update --automode -5" (noninteractive mv), I've created a patch in the same vein.