Conffile prompt for /etc/init.d/networking on update to 0.7.5ubuntu3

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

Hi Laney,

Can you please show the full upgrade history of this package on your system (from /var/log/apt/term.log or /var/log/dpkg.log)? I didn't see this problem here; I suppose the package took a different upgrade path on your system historically, resulting in a different state of the conffile.

(Note that, in theory, we should be able to get all the information we need to know from /var/lib/dpkg/status... but only *before* this has been changed by dpkg as part of the upgrade to the new version.)

Yep, here's the executive summary which seems to go right back to when I installed the system:

laney@iota> zgrep ifupdown dpkg.log* | sort -t : -k 2 | sed -n '1p; /upgrade/p'
dpkg.log.7.gz:2012-08-23 16:51:00 install ifupdown <none> 0.7~beta2ubuntu8
dpkg.log.7.gz:2012-10-18 11:41:42 upgrade ifupdown:amd64 0.7~beta2ubuntu8 0.7.2ubuntu2
dpkg.log.4.gz:2013-01-10 16:09:11 upgrade ifupdown:amd64 0.7.2ubuntu2 0.7.5ubuntu2
dpkg.log:2013-05-19 21:33:55 upgrade ifupdown:amd64 0.7.5ubuntu2 0.7.5ubuntu3

full grep attached too.

I didn't get this on my other system which goes like this

dpkg.log.7.gz:2012-10-07 07:32:34 install ifupdown:amd64 <none> 0.7.2ubuntu1
dpkg.log.7.gz:2012-10-10 09:46:11 upgrade ifupdown:amd64 0.7.2ubuntu1 0.7.2ubuntu2
dpkg.log.6.gz:2012-11-06 15:24:12 upgrade ifupdown:amd64 0.7.2ubuntu2 0.7.5ubuntu1
dpkg.log.5.gz:2012-12-13 09:46:56 upgrade ifupdown:amd64 0.7.5ubuntu1 0.7.5ubuntu2
dpkg.log:2013-05-20 09:16:59 upgrade ifupdown:amd64 0.7.5ubuntu2 0.7.5ubuntu3

Got it, thanks. So this is reproducible on a system that's continuously upgraded from precise->quantal->raring->saucy. The reason is that, in the precise->quantal upgrade, /etc/init.d/networking is taken over as a conffile from netbase, and due to an ordering difference on upgrade vs. new install, this gets stored to the conffile database with the md5sum of /lib/init/upstart-job. Thus, when removing the conffile from the system in the ifupdown preinst, dpkg views this as a "local diff" to the previous conffile version and prompts about the local change.

When the first install is from quantal or later, dpkg does *not* store the md5sum for /etc/init.d/networking -> /lib/init/upstart-job. Instead it stores the file state as 'newconffile'.

So to reproduce this in a clean raring environment, it's sufficient to run the following command:

 sudo sed -i -e'/etc.init.d.networking/ s/newconffile/ce96a6f22cc836088eef6673d853a765/' /var/lib/dpkg/status

(this is the md5sum of the precise version of /lib/init/upstart-job.)

So this is reproducible, now to figure out how to get around dpkg here.

This bug was fixed in the package ifupdown - 0.7.5ubuntu4

---------------
ifupdown (0.7.5ubuntu4) saucy; urgency=low

  * Due to the checkered history of /etc/init.d/networking, only remove the
    upstart-job symlink in the preinst if the dpkg status is 'newconffile',
    to avoid bogus conffile prompts on upgrade, and manually manipulate the
    new conffile into place in the postinst. LP: #1181856.
 -- Steve Langasek <email address hidden> Mon, 20 May 2013 19:05:31 +0000