Manual: ucfr

UCFR(1)						   Debian GNU/Linux manual					     UCFR(1)

NAME
       ucfr - Update Configuration File Registry:  associate packages with configuration files

SYNOPSIS
       ucfr [options]  

DESCRIPTION
       Where Package is the package associated with the configuration file (and, in some sense, its owner), and Path to con‐
       figuration  file is the full path to the location (usually under /etc) where the configuration file lives, and is po‐
       tentially modified by the end user.  Please note that usually this means that we register actual files, and not	sym‐
       bolic links to files.  ucfr will follow symbolic links and register the real file,  and not the symbolic link.

       This  script  maintains an association between configuration files and packages, and is meant to help provide facili‐
       ties that dpkg provides conffiles for configuration files and not shipped in a Debian package,  but  handled  by	 the
       postinst	 by ucf instead.  This script is idempotent, associating a package to a file multiple times is not an error.
       It is normally an error to try to associate a file which is already associated with another package, but this can  be
       overridden by using the --force option.

OPTIONS
       -h, --help
	      Print a short usage message

       -n, --no-action
	      Dry run.	Print the actions that would be taken if the script is invoked, but take no action.

       -d [n], --debug [n]
	      Set the debug level to the (optional) level n (n defaults to 1).	This turns on copious debugging information.

       -p, --purge
	      Removes  all  vestiges  of  the association between the named package and the configuration file from the reg‐
	      istry.  The association must already exist; if the configuration file is associated with some  other  package,
	      an error happens, unless the option --force is also given.  In that case, the any associations for the config‐
	      uration  file  are removed from the registry, whether or not the package name matches.  This action is idempo‐
	      tent, asking for an association to be purged multiple times does not result in an error, since  attempting  to
	      remove  an  non-existent association is silently ignored unless the --verbose option is used (in which case it
	      just issues a diagnostic).

       -v, --verbose
	      Make the script be very verbose about setting internal variables.

       -f, --force
	      This option forces operations requested even if the configuration file in consideration is  owned	 by  another
	      package.	 This allows a package to hijack a configuration file from another package, or to purge the associa‐
	      tion between the file and some other package in the registry.

       --state-dir /path/to/dir
	      Set the state directory to /path/to/dir instead of the default /var/lib/ucf.  Used mostly for testing.

USAGE
       The most common case usage is pretty simple: a single line invocation in the postinst on configure, and another	sin‐
       gle  line  in the postrm to tell ucfr to forget about the association with the configuration file on purge (using the
       --purge option) is all that is needed (assuming ucfr is still on the system).

FILES
       /var/lib/ucf/registry, and /var/lib/ucf/registry.X, where X is a small integer, where previous versions of  the	reg‐
       istry are stored.

       /etc/ucf.conf

EXAMPLES
       If  the	package foo wants to use ucfr to associate itself with a configuration file foo.conf, a simple invocation of
       ucfr in the postinst file is all that is needed:

       ucfr foo /etc/foo.conf

       On purge, one should tell ucf to forget about the file (see detailed examples in /usr/share/doc/ucf/examples):

       ucfr --purge foo /etc/foo.conf

       If you want to remove all the conf files for a given package foo, the simplest way is to use ucfq.  For example

       ucfq -w foo | cut -d : -f 1 | while read cfile ; do ucfr -v $cfile ; done

SEE ALSO
       ucf(1), ucf.conf(5).

AUTHOR
       This manual page was written Manoj Srivastava , for the Debian GNU/Linux system.

Debian							 Feb 16 2018						     UCFR(1)