dexconf overwrites xorg.conf without warning or backup

My bug report was marked as a duplicate of this one. I cannot see the reference to it here so I post my bug report here since it contains the likely cause of your problem.

Binary package hint: x11-common

Hi,

dexconf overwrites xorg.conf without making a backup and without creating a backup copy when called with root privileges from the console. This can lead to data loss.

Regards

Rolf

This is fixed in eft, can close if you like

Thanks

Reuben, thank you for reporting back. I am glad you had no troubles now while upgrading to eft. But the bug is not fixed.

# cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf /tmp/
# dexconf
# md5sum /etc/X11/xorg.conf /tmp/xorg.conf
b2f3455228d24b0c7a9b560a23ecd632 /etc/X11/xorg.conf
a938b43913bb3f34331d3213566af3c1 /tmp/xorg.conf
# ll /etc/X11/xorg.conf*
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4354 2006-12-06 18:07 /etc/X11/xorg.conf

IOW, no backup but xorg.conf is being changed.

Fair enough. The message when it did the upgrade said "we need to make some
updates to the file, old one is backed up in...". It left alone all of the
custom settings that mattered to me; I think it may have changed some of the
drivers, etc. I think this is correct behaviour, since sometimes the
drivers, etc, *do* change. It would be a bug if it didn't update drivers
that no longer exist, etc.

On 12/6/06, Rolf Leggewie <email address hidden> wrote:
>
> Reuben, thank you for reporting back. I am glad you had no troubles now
> while upgrading to eft. But the bug is not fixed.
>
> # cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf /tmp/
> # dexconf
> # md5sum /etc/X11/xorg.conf /tmp/xorg.conf
> b2f3455228d24b0c7a9b560a23ecd632 /etc/X11/xorg.conf
> a938b43913bb3f34331d3213566af3c1 /tmp/xorg.conf
> # ll /etc/X11/xorg.conf*
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4354 2006-12-06 18:07 /etc/X11/xorg.conf
>
> IOW, no backup but xorg.conf is being changed.
>
> --
> custom xorg.conf should not be overridden
> https://launchpad.net/bugs/57776
>

Been three months. Has there been an update? Also, given the nature of the bug, if this is fixed, will the fix be backported to Dapper?

This should be fixed long ago (although post-dapper, I think). The fix is too complicated to be backported for dapper, though.

Maybe it should be long fixed. But at least it is not fixed in edgy.

root@X24:/media/usbdisk# cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf /tmp/
root@X24:/media/usbdisk# dexconf
root@X24:/media/usbdisk# md5sum /etc/X11/xorg.conf /tmp/xorg.conf
a7ae1025f6f3df20814c2f30c63cf22e /etc/X11/xorg.conf
3fff327516b90c82e3399a9db389e12b /tmp/xorg.conf

no backup was being created either. No warning.

A tangential issue: I added a new card to my system, and the old xorg.conf was blown away without the system prompting me. At least the new xorg.conf got X up and running, but it was broken (no xinerama, cloned X view across the monitors).

You are not meant to run dexconf directly. Use 'dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg' instead. That preserves your config if there are hand-written rules.