I'm using bind-chroot and I have customized named.conf so I had: symlink /etc/named.conf -> /var/named/chroot/etc/named.conf Latest caching-nameserver renamed my named.conf to named.conf.rpmsave in /var/named/chroot/etc and thus breaks my configuration. The reason is that new package has the same named.conf (aka MD5SUM) but with different dates (last-modified). This is wrong as this breaks all working configs around the world in all RHEL4 installations. The source RPM has named.conf as source file. This is good. But the file is placed to its destination by command "install" without "--preserve-timestamps" option (-p). And this is the bug we hit now. I think that all yours src.rpm packages should be checked to use "-p" on config files or you will be blamed again and again. So new policy for updated packes should be created and all updated packages in the future should be fixed before shipping. And RHEL6 should not have this bug in all packages or it will break upgrades.
We at Red Hat Japan received the same report from our customers. This package forced them to move .rpmsave file back in order to get their bind working again. We are aware that caching-nameserver replace named.conf by design and reported the their usage is not typical (or recommended), however, in order to be on the safe side, we think it should be set to "noreplace".
Are you sure what happened with your files Milan? I updated to caching-nameserver.noarch 0:7.3-3.0.1.el4_6 but observed a different, even more severe problem with rpm: My /var/named/chroot/etc/named.conf was customized, which means that it contained data that was very important for me. The update kept only the "old version" symlink at /etc/named.conf as /etc/named.conf.rpmsave but overwrote the original file at /var/named/chroot/etc/named.conf with the new version in the rpm! So my own data was lost. I had to recover it from a backup. RPM should instead keep a copy of my own /var/named/chroot/etc/named.conf as /var/named/chroot/etc/named.conf.rpmsave.
Main problem is that caching-nameserver package is not designed for servers, it is configuration for local caching only nameserver. Configuration files are overwritten since good old RHEL3 GA so it's nothing new. Although caching-nameserver package should not be installed on authoritative servers I think we will avoid such problems in future. In next update named.conf will be marked as noreplace
Are you sure Adam? It's the easiest way to get the named.ca file that you need to run a nameserver.
T thing so too. Every namesever have to have root zone definition, loopback etc (by RFC request). I see no reason to not use what is is provided by this package because every generic file could be upgraded (root zone) or fixed in case of a bug (others). Your system-config-nameserver should use these files too to be able to be updated without running updated system-config-nameserver.