Bug 1019354

Hmm, let me see if I got this right:

1) /etc/security/pam_winbind.conf lived in "samba-winbind" sub-package
2) the file had been modified
3) the file got split out to "samba-winbind-modules" sub-package in version 4.0.9-2
4) user does 'yum update' which does not pull in the newly split sub-package because nothing depends on it and no such package was previously installed
5) /etc/security/pam_winbind.conf is no longer owned by any installed package so its to be erased, but since its a %config file which has been modified it gets backed up instead
6) /etc/security/pam_winbind.conf no longer exists, and systems depending on it are screwed
7) user tries to recover by manually installing samba-winbind-modules, but this installs factory default config so it doesn't directly help at this point

I see no rpm bug in the above sequence, only a result of a packaging messup.

Thank you for the assessment. If not a bug, how about a feature request for
%config(simon-says-no-bloody-replace)

Where removing the package and then re-installing the package (or, as in this case, a package which provides the same config file) would *not* move the existing, working, config out of the way?

Failing that, what would you recommend as the least bad way of handling this screwup, now that it's happened.

For my internal users I have a $COMPANY-user-setup package which was responsible for pulling in and configuring Samba and a bunch of other things anyway, so I just added samba-winbind-modules to its Requires(post) and also the following %post script:

if [ -r /etc/security/pam_winbind.conf.rpmsave ] && \
     ! grep -q '^krb5_auth = yes' /etc/security/pam_winbind.conf; then
    mv -f /etc/security/pam_winbind.conf{.rpmsave,}
fi

{C,Sh}ould we do something similar in the updated samba-winbind-modules package, as part of the update which fixes the dependencies? So that when people just do 'yum update' and get the fix for bug 1018856, it magically (but hackishly) reinstates their config file too?

I dont think this kind of packaging mistakes can be prevented by new flags - you dont want ALL config files to be left behind as-is, and which files are truly precious is system (configuration) dependent.

Rpm does need something to better integrate with externally managed (and locked down) configuration (company setups etc such as yours) though. There is/was similar request in bug 573320, also incidentally related to samba configuration.

As for papering over the mistake in samba-winbind-modules, I'm not going to make recommendations one way or the other. Well-intended repair attempts can easily end up being just as harmful as just leaving the thing alone.

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