"make install" overwrites existing smartd.conf without warning or backup

[kaluscha]

When installing from source tarball, "make install" overwrites an existing smartd.conf file without warning or creating a backup.
If such a config file already exists, it should at least be renamed to something like smartd.conf.backup so the existing configuration doesn't get completely lost.

[Christian Franke]

Possible workaround: ./configure --enable-sample

[kaluscha]

It would, of course, have been possible to copy the smartd.conf file beforehand - if I had known about smartmontools behaviour. But I was completely surprised to learn that smartmontools' "make install" simply destroys an existing config.

I've installed many other packages using the classic "configure; make; make install" approach. Almost all of them preserve existing configurations or warn about installing a new config after renaming the old.

[Christian Franke]

Replying to kaluscha:

I've installed many other packages using the classic "configure; make; make install" approach. Almost all of them preserve existing configurations or warn about installing a new config after renaming the old.

Could you please provide some example package names?

[kaluscha]

E.g. Apache2, OpenSSH, Samba, ...

I don't expect a fancy algorithm of merging new and existing config files. In my opionion there are two options which are simple to implement:

1. install new config file after renaming the old one and give a warning about that (especially useful when there are major changes)

2. preserve an existing config file and create the new one with a different name (and give a warning about that, too)

BTW: OpenSuSE uses the second option pretty much; e.g. creating .rpmnew-files when a new or updated rpm-packages encounters an existing configuration. Then it is quite easy to do a diff on both config files to see what options are new.

In many cases your default config with DEVICESCAN will work fine, but I have some machines with a more sophisticated setup (monitor almost everything, but don't complain about small changes in temperature, send an e-mail if something is fishy, leave disk X alone as it contains very old data which is rarely accessed so the disk goes to standby mode etc.)

Thnx for dealing with the issue anyway,
Rainer

[Christian Franke]

r3205.