Since there are numerous beginners on this list here is a hint that took me a while to discover. The hint is to resolve the differences hinted at by rpmnew and rpmsave files. When a well behaved rpm package installs it knows the difference between configuration files and other files. This permits future update rpm packages to know what to do with the changed and modified configuration files. One common strategy for config files involves *rpmnew and *rpmsave files. These permit the packager to not clobber changes you may have made or might need to remember. For example after updating Apache on one box I see: /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf.rpmnew This is the default /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf file. Since your file could contain important site specific changes, it is not overwritten. The 'new' default file from the update package is installed as rpmnew and might reflect new options or a new notion of best practices. The system manager can now compare the new with the old and make decisions on the various flags and options (see diff). Some updates may involve default config file settings that were unsafe or made obsolete in a major rewrite. In such cases the new might be installed and your old file renamed as something.rpmsave. Again inspect the differences and resolve the changes. So check your upgrade.log and search for *.rpmnew *.rpmsave on your system. Check the log: egrep "rpmnew|rpmsave" /root/upgrade.log A quick system wide search trick is to use the slocate data base that is updated once a day: locate rpmnew locate rpmsave Or do full system search with find, something like: find / -print | egrep "rpmnew$|rpmsave$" A cautious system administrator will scan the machine for *.rpmnew *.rpmsave files after each yum or up2date action. When done with all the resolutions none will be left in the system. Very cautious admins will also have a log file of config files that have been touched and include them as special in their backup plans. There are multiple tools for showing and resolving the differences between two files. This week I like the -d option of vim. I always start in read only mode, example: vim -R -d /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf.rpmnew /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf I still use diff a lot. Example: diff /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf.rpmnew /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf Some files are configured with an agent/ tool and some are edited by hand with a text editor. The "agent/ tool" generated files will commonly have a header at the top reminding you what tool created the file and to not edit by hand. If changes are needed to "agent generated files" I make backups if the tool is new to me, then launch the tool. So if a package breaks on an update check for rpmnew and rpmsave files. Have a Merry Christmas all, TomM -- T o m M i t c h e l l mitch48 -a*t- yahoo-dot-com
