Preservation of system state considered harmful

[Sean Perry]

Rick Moen wrote:
> Quoting Sean Perry (shaleh@speakeasy.net):
> 
> 
>>curious. "I was preserving machine state during upgrades"? Does this 
>>mean that you had dpkg set to not ask "You have modified this config 
>>file, should I overwrite it?"?
> 
> 
> Like Nick, I'm quite sure I wasn't asked.  
> 
> I suspect this is because the question was set to a priority below
> debconf's cutoff.  In my case, that was "medium".
> 

it is asked by dpkg and has nothing to do with debconf.

Sounds more like improper conffile handling on the php package's fault.
More than likely the php.ini is autogenerated. As mentioned the package 
maintainer should have added a "hey, this is dangerous" message.