NAME
ucfr - Update Configuration File Registry: associate packages with
configuration files
SYNOPSIS
ucfr [options] <Package> <Path to configuration file>
DESCRIPTION
Where Package is the package associated with the configuration file
(and, in some sense, its owner), and Path to configuration file is the
full path to the location (usually under /etc) where the configuration
file lives, and is potentially modified by the end user.
This script maintains an association between configuration files and
packages, and is meant to help provide facilities that dpkg provides
conffiles for configuration files and not shipped in a Debian package,
but handled by the postinst by ucf instead. This script is idempotent,
associating a package to a file multiple times is not an error. It is
normally an error to try to associate a file which is already
associated with another package, but this can be over ridden by using
the --force option.
OPTIONS
-h, --help
Print a short usage message
-n, --no-action
Dry run. Print the actions that would be taken if the script is
invoked, but take no action.
-d [n], --debug [n]
Set the debug level to the (optional) level n (n defaults to 1).
This turns on copious debugging information.
-p, --purge
Removes all vestiges of the association between the named
package and the configuration file from the registry. The
association must already exist; if the configuration file is
associated with some other package, an error happens, unless the
option --force is also given. In that case, the any associations
for the configuration file are removed from the registry,
whether or not the package name matches. This action is
idempotent, asking for an association to be purged multiple
times does not result in an error, since attempting to remove an
non-existent association is silently ignored unless the
--verbose option is used (in which case it just issues a
diagnostic).
-v, --verbose
Make the script be very verbose about setting internal
variables.
-f, --force
This option forces operations requested even if the
configuration file in consideration is owned by another package.
This allows a package to hijack a configuration file from
another package, or to purge the association between the file
and some other package in the registry.
--state-dir /path/to/dir
Set the state directory to /path/to/dir instead of the default
/var/lib/ucf. Used mostly for testing.
USAGE
The most common case usage is pretty simple: a single line invocation
in the postinst on configure, and another single line in the postrm to
tell ucfr to forget about the association with the configuration file
on purge (using the --purge option) is all that is needed (assuming
ucfr is still on the system).
FILES
/var/lib/ucf/registry, and /var/lib/ucf/registry.X, where X is a small
integer, where previous versions of the registry are stored.
/etc/ucf.conf
EXAMPLES
If the package foo wants to use ucfr to associate itself with a
configuration file foo.conf, a simple invocation of ucfr in the
postinst file is all that is needed:
ucfr foo /etc/foo.conf
On purge, one should tell ucf to forget about the file (see detailed
examples in /usr/share/doc/examples):
ucfr --purge foo /etc/foo.conf
SEE ALSO
ucf(1), ucf.conf(5).
AUTHOR
This manual page was written Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org>,
for the Debian GNU/Linux system.