Preservation of system state considered harmful

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Sean Perry (shaleh@speakeasy.net):

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

"man 7 debconf-devel" seems to agree with my recollection that it has a
lot to do with debconf.  Am I badly misreading, or does debconf store
and replay "config scripts" for previously-given answers to "any questions
necessary to configure the package"?

       The config script can be run in one of three ways:

       1      If a package is pre-configured, with dpkg-preconfigure, its con-
              fig script is run, and is passed the parameters "configure", and
              installed-version.

       2      When a package's postinst is run, debconf will try  to run  the
              config  script  then too, and it will be passed the same parame-
              ters it was passed when it is pre-configured. This is necessary
              because  the package might not have been pre-configured, and the
              config script still needs to get a chance to run. See HACKS  for
              details.

       3      If  a package is reconfigured, with dpkg-reconfigure, its config
              script it run, and is passed the  parameters "reconfigure"  and
              installed-version.
[...]
       Debconf  is  currently  not  fully  integrated into dpkg (but I want to
       change this in the future), and  so  some  messy  hacks  are currently
       called for.

It's quite possible that I'm badly misinterpreting, and am not trying to
argue, but rather to specify what I think I see, and where.

> 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.

Good point.