Description of problem: fedora-release package always overwrites /etc/issue, /etc/issue.net files. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): 8 How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Edit and customize your /etc/issue and/or /etc/issue.net files. 2. [Re-]Install the fedora-release package. Actual results: The custom /etc/issue is copied to /etc/issue.rpmsave and replaced with the "standard" /etc/issue. Expected results: Custom edits of /etc/issue{,.net} should be preferred over the "standard" ones. Especially considering that /etc/issue.net contains OS name and version and may be viewable to network clients who can use that information in an attack. Nevertheless, I am in a corporate environment where we have a 'unauthorized access forbidden' login prompt and there's no reason for the standard /etc/issue to overwrite that every time I upgrade. Applications shouldn't depend on the contents of /etc/issue to determine OS version anyway; that's what /etc/fedora-release (or better, /usr/bin/lsb_release) is for. Additional info:
This is a policy decision with some tradeoffs that clearly causes problems in your situation. However, the overwriting is needed to make /etc/issue updates happen properly in certain other situations, so I'll probably stick with the current policy to upset the least number of people.
I don't understand what the other situations are... if you use the confignoreplace option in the rpm spec (or whatever that option is), it will overwrite the existing /etc/issue if it hasn't been edited; otherwise it will create an /etc/issue.rpmnew and leave a custom-edited /etc/issue alone. I can't see any situation in which someone who has a custom-edited /etc/issue would need to have it always replaced with the standard /etc/issue (and in the few cases in which someone might want to do this, that's why the rpmnew file would be there).