Bill Campbell wrote:
locate rpmsave locate rpmnew
rpmsave is left from *un*installations, rpmnew is the *new* file, there is no file overwritten. rpm usually doesn't overwrite files if they got changed.
AFAIK this is not correct, a package upgrade can create either of these (or both, or neither of them despite your having edited a file). And that's the way it should be, either choice can be justified. It depends on the package's SPEC file. rpm just does what it's told, everything is in the hands of the package maintainer.
I think that the only time a .rpmnew file is created is if the SPEC file specifies ``%config(noreplace)'' for a file. If the ``noreplace'' option is not used, the .rpmsave files are created either when a package is removed, or when a file specified as a configuration file in the RPM SPEC file is updated and the file is sufficiently different from the default (for some definition of suffieiently).
In the OpenPKG portable packaging system, which is RPM based, the presence of any .rpmnew or .rpmsave configuration files will prevent a package from starting, and warning messages will be generated until the situation is resolved.
That sounds like the kiss of death for any critical service. Can't it figure out ahead of time that this is going to happen and let the service keep running unchanged with a warning message about needing the update instead?