If you upgrade to FC4

[Kelson Vibber]

On Jul 2, 2005, at 12:37 PM, beartooth wrote:
> Is there a good explanation of .rpmnew files somewhere, in terms a
> subtechnoid can follow? I don't recall ever hearing of them till now.

When RPM upgrades a package, if it notices that you (or another  
program) have customized a config file, it will do one of two  
things:  Either it will rename your existing file as  
whatever.conf.rpmsave and create a new default config, or it will  
leave your config in place and create the new config as  
whatever.conf.rpmnew.

I'm not entirely sure how it decides which change to make.  It may be  
something the person who builds the package can define.

rpm -U will output a message saying something like "/etc/profile  
saved as /etc/profile.rpmsave", and in my experience, yum has always  
output these messages as it installs each package.

So after you do a major upgrade, you should look through /etc for  
files ending in .rpmsave and .rpmnew, compare them to the current  
config file, and decide whether to accept the new config, stick with  
the old one, or pick and choose between them.  Most of the time you  
can get away with using the choice RPM made -- you don't *need* the  
new command prompt for bash, or you want to keep your list of font  
directories -- but sometimes something important has changed, and you  
need to combine your customizations with the new config.