Frequently Asked Questions about base-files
===========================================

* Questions about /etc/issue and /etc/debian_version:

Q. I upgraded my system to the testing distribution and now my /etc/issue
says "trixie/sid". Should it not read "trixie" or "testing"?

Q. I upgraded my system to the unstable distribution and now my /etc/issue
says "trixie/sid". Should it not read "sid" or "unstable"?

A. That would be nice, but it is not possible because of the way the
testing distribution works. Packages uploaded for unstable reach
testing after ten days, provided they are built for every released
architecture, have no RC-bugs and their dependencies may be met in
testing. You should consider the testing and unstable distributions as
two sides of the same coin. Since the base-files package in testing
was initially uploaded for unstable, the only sensible /etc/issue to
have is one that is both valid for testing and unstable, hence
"trixie/sid" (or whatever is appropriate).

Q. Why "trixie/sid" and not "testing/unstable" as it used to be?

A. The codename is a little bit more informative, as the meaning of
"testing" changes over time.

Q. Ok, but how do I know which distribution I'm running?

A. If you are running testing or unstable, then /etc/debian_version is
not a reliable way to know that anymore. Looking at the contents of
your /etc/apt/sources.list file is probably a much better way.

Q. There is a new point release and I've just upgraded my system.
The /etc/debian_version file now says 10.x but /etc/issue still says 10.
Is this ok?

A. Yes. The release managers asked me not to touch /etc/issue, as that's
a file which is often customized by the user. The /etc/debian_version file,
on the other side, is updated at every point release, so that the exact
Debian version is shown when used by tools like reportbug.

* Other questions:

Q. After upgrading my system recently, I noticed that some files from
base-files do not match the ones which are installed on a fresh install
of squeeze. Should I not be warned about that?

A. Those files are configuration files, so they are completely under
the control of the system admin. The files installed by base-files are
just defaults. Changes in the default files are not important enough
to warn the user, as it is also policy that prompting should be
reduced to a minimum. This is also the reason they are not handled via
dpkg's conffile mechanism.

In either case, if you want to "upgrade" those files, just look at the
postinst for base-files (i.e. /var/lib/dpkg/info/base-files.postinst)
and you will see how they are created and where their master copies are:

  install_from_default /usr/share/base-files/dot.profile   /root/.profile
  install_from_default /usr/share/base-files/dot.bashrc    /root/.bashrc
  install_from_default /usr/share/base-files/profile       /etc/profile
  install_from_default /usr/share/base-files/motd          /etc/motd

So, if you want your system to be as similar as possible to a newly
installed squeeze system, you might want to sync these files manually.

Note 1: Since base-files version 6.10, /etc/profile is automatically
upgraded if it has not been modified from a previous default.

Note 2: The file /etc/nsswitch.conf has been moved to libc-bin.


Q. Why isn't license "foo" included in common-licenses?

A. I delegate such decisions to the policy group. If you want to
propose a new license you should make a policy proposal to modify the
paragraph in policy saying "Packages distributed under the Apache
license (version 2.0), the Artistic license, the GNU GPL (versions 1,
2, or 3), the GNU LGPL (versions 2, 2.1, or 3), and the GNU FDL
(versions 1.2 or 1.3) should refer to the corresponding files under
/usr/share/common-licenses". The way of doing this is explained in the
debian-policy package. As usual, you should always take a look at
already reported bugs against debian-policy before submitting a new
one.

Q. I upgraded from woody to sarge. Should my system be FHS-compliant now?

A. Achieving FHS compliance by upgrading would be tricky and prone to
error in certain cases, so it is not a goal of base-files, nor it is
planned to be. By default, some "mandatory" directories (like /opt,
/srv or /media) are only created in the first install (performed by
debootstrap), to keep the code as simple as possible, follow the
principle of least surprise on upgrades, and also to give people the
freedom to remove those directories without them being created again
when base-files is upgraded. Therefore, if you are running any sort of
compliance tests, you should do it on newly installed systems only.

Q. My system (when I do "dpkg -s base-files") shows /etc/profile as
an "obsolete conffile". Is this ok?

A. Yes. The file was handled by base-files as a conffile in the dpkg sense
in the past, so dpkg may consider the file as an obsolete conffile.
There is currently not a way to tell dpkg to unregister it as a conffile
without removing it, so the best approach for now is to do nothing about it.

Santiago Vila <sanvila@debian.org>
