Bug 957295 – create a set for the packages that do not change /etc and dont require etc-update or dispatch-conf to allow portage run as cron job and another set of packages that require manual configuration

• Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX
• Product: Portage Development

[Description Benjamin Schulz 2025-06-06 23:10:24 UTC]

Some packages change the configuration in /etc and these files must be manually handled by etc-update or dispatch-conf.

This makes it somewhat dangerous to run portage with a command like 
emerge-uUD world 

in a cron job, as it could be that the new programs installed by this command need updated configuration files in /etc which the cron job can not handle automatically.

However, in practice this is rarely the case.

Perhaps one can remove this danger by

creating two package sets similar like "system" or "world" but for  packages that 

a)do not change the configuration files in /etc or dont need manual configuration afterwards, 

and 

b)another set of packages whose config files need to be manually configured by dispatch-conf or etc-update.

Then one could update set a) with a cron job and set b) manually from time to time

Reproducible: Always

[Comment 1 Sam James 2025-06-06 23:14:59 UTC]

(In reply to Benjamin Schulz from comment #0)
> Some packages change the configuration in /etc and these files must be
> manually handled by etc-update or dispatch-conf.
> 
> This makes it somewhat dangerous to run portage with a command like 
> emerge-uUD world 
> 

We don't encourage that at all. We perhaps could work towards it but it's not encouraged today. You already need to check for news items before/after (which isn't ideal) and to read ewarns/elogs.

I think you could write a custom set which excludes anything that installs files in /etc, though.

> in a cron job, as it could be that the new programs installed by this
> command need updated configuration files in /etc which the cron job can not
> handle automatically.
> 

But those *are* fine, because their config is preserved? I guess you mean the "dovecot case" where some new config gets installed and is needed for it to run on restart.

> However, in practice this is rarely the case.
> 
> Perhaps one can remove this danger by
> 
> creating two package sets similar like "system" or "world" but for  packages
> that 
> 
> a)do not change the configuration files in /etc or dont need manual
> configuration afterwards, 

This can't work because a package might newly modify something in /etc.

[Comment 2 Benjamin Schulz 2025-06-07 01:59:00 UTC]

(In reply to Sam James from comment #1)
> We don't encourage that at all. We perhaps could work towards it but it's
> not encouraged today. You already need to check for news items before/after
> (which isn't ideal) and to read ewarns/elogs.
> 

That is indeed true. So I guess one can shelf this idea...