On Feb 2, 2006, at 12:26 AM, Wichmann, Mats D wrote:
what bugs me about these schemes that usually consist of "cat >> somefile" is that there's no clean uninstall from that... at least conceptually it doesn't seem right that uninstalling any given rpm doesn't undo the damage it has done to the system...
The "cat >> somefile" option is also harmful because it will keep on adding the extra option for each consecutive upgrade.
That said, there isn't always a good way to 'rollback' a change on deinstall. What if there are two packages that both need a certain option or configuration value changed. Simply undoing the change on uninstall of package A would break package B.
In the case of sysctl, I think it is safest to put this in a package- specific initscript that uses /sbin/sysctl.
Pi