Upgrading util-linux-extra from 2.39.2-2 leaves the obsolete conffiles
/etc/init.d/hwclock.sh and /etc/default/hwclock on the system.

Moreover, there are no maintainer scripts anymore to handle the obsolete
init script, so even after purging util-linux-extra broken symlinks in
/etc/rc{S,0,6}.d remain. :-(

Sven,

It was a conscious decision (on my part) not to remove the conffiles at this
stage. Whilst I accept this leaves cruft on systems that don't have bin:initscripts
installed, it has the benefit that user modified conffiles are preserved during
the transition to initscripts, as required by the Policy.

I think this cleanup can happen saftely in the Forky release cycle.

For reference, the udev maintainers have recently tried this cleanup at an
earlier stage and it has not been straightforward.

Mark

Sven,

It was a conscious decision (on my part) not to remove the conffiles at this
stage. Whilst I accept this leaves cruft on systems that don't have initscripts
installed, it has the benefit that user modified conffiles are preserved during
the transition to bin:initscripts, as required by the Policy.

I think this cleanup can happen saftely in the Forky release cycle.

For reference, the udev maintainers have recently tried this cleanup at an
earlier stage and it has not been straightforward.

Mark

Control: tags -1 + help
[..]

On Wed, 11 Oct 2023 Mark Hindley wrote:
| It was a conscious decision (on my part) not to remove the conffiles at this
| stage. Whilst I accept this leaves cruft on systems that don't have initscripts
| installed, it has the benefit that user modified conffiles are preserved during
| the transition to bin:initscripts, as required by the Policy.
|
| I think this cleanup can happen saftely in the Forky release cycle.
|
| For reference, the udev maintainers have recently tried this cleanup at an
| earlier stage and it has not been straightforward.

It is still unclear to me how to tell dpkg that the files moved
between packages and it should not just delete them.

Patches welcome.

Chris

Chris,

Thanks for including me in this.

Nor me. AFAIK it is not possible at the moment. But it would be a useful dpkg
feature for cases like this.

Guillem,

Are we correct that there is no way to achieve this at the moment?

Mark

On Sat, 16 Nov 2024 15:06:32 +0100 Chris Hofstaedtler <zeha@debian.org> wrote:
wrote:
as
- so
fact
up
conffiles at this
initscripts
preserved during
cleanup at an

The conffiles were actually removed from util-linux-extra in version
2.39.2-3 (commit 13ccd799bf43106).

So they both appear as obsolete, and associated to util-linux-extra.

They should be cleant using dpkg-maintscript-helper or its frontend in
dh_installdeb (with a util-linux-extra.maintscript file).

* Sébastien Villemot <sebastien@debian.org> [250415 12:24]:

Please provide a patch for the util-linux(-extra) side, without
breaking the sysvinit/initscripts side.

Chris

Le mardi 15 avril 2025 à 19:28 +0200, Chris Hofstaedtler a écrit :
is already broken on fresh Debian installs, since the corresponding
conffiles are not provided by any package.

So I think there are only two proper ways of fixing this issue:
– either reinstate the sysvinit/initscripts files in the util-linux-
extra package (at least until the next release cycle)
– or clean the obsolete conffiles (but that will obviously break
sysvinit on upgraded systems as well)

Best wishes,

* Sébastien Villemot <sebastien@debian.org> [250422 10:54]:

initscripts provides hwclock.sh.

Chris

Le mardi 22 avril 2025 à 15:03 +0200, Chris Hofstaedtler a écrit :

My understanding is that there is no way to properly handle this
situation with our tooling.

People who have initscripts install can manually fix it with:
# apt reinstall util-linux-extra

People who don’t have initscripts installed can fix it with:
# rm /etc/init.d/hwclock.sh /etc/default/hwclock
# apt reinstall util-linux-extra