[SOLVED] Three confusing messages after a big OpenBSD package update

Yesterday I upgraded my OpenBSD base system from 6.5 to 6.6. That went very smoothly. Today I carried out the package update. At the end of the update were three instructions that I find confusing:

 --- -dbus-1.12.12p0v0 -------------------
Remember to update /etc/machine-id
--- -dconf-0.30.1p1 -------------------
You should also run rm -rf /etc/dconf/db/*
You should also run rm -rf /etc/dconf/profile/*
--- -libxml-2.9.8p1 -------------------
Remember to update /var/db/xmlcatalog

Does the first message mean that I should run dbus-uuidgen and direct the output into /etc/machine-id? I'm a bit loth to do that as the man page says you should not change machine_ids on a running system.

The second message seems to be irrelevant as I don't actually have any files in these two directories. Should I have any?

I do have a /var/db/xmlcatalog file. So should I run xmlcatalog and direct the results into this file to overwrite what is there?

I just need a little reassurance .

A package update (pkg_add -u or -r) removes the old package and replaces it with the new. So you'll get these sorts of post-delete-cleanup messages that you can safely ignore.

You mean those operations were actually carried out by the install scripts?

Originally Posted by hazel You mean those operations were actually carried out by the install scripts?

No, I think what he's saying is that the messages are additional steps one needs to take when removing something, but that the package tools aren't smart enough to differentiate the remove phase of an upgrade from an actual remove and spam you with irrelevant messages.

Thanks, guys!

The pkg_* tools are very simple and yes they do output those "clean up" notes as others have suggested, even when just upgrading a package.

OpenBSD does not have a package manager with the sophistication, features and added complexity of FreeBSD's pkg (pkgng). The latter being very much an implementation of a Linux style package manager.

And from a cultural / social point-of-view, if you dislike something about OpenBSD -- such as seeing these messages appear during an update -- the Project will gladly review user-submitted patches to eliminate them, and will either ignore or disparage entreaties to have someone else do the work to eliminate them.

Most of the Project's developers started on the road to being developers by first submitting patches to address things that annoyed them.

That's not as easy as it sounds! Out of curiosity, I followed the invocation sequence: pkg_delete-> PkgDelete->Delete. It's all perl scripts and I don't speak perl. But the message about updating the file definitely comes from Delete.pm.

sub delete
{
        my ($self, $state) = @_;
        my $realname = $self->realname($state);
        if ($state->verbose >= 2 && $state->{extra}) {
                $state->say("deleting extra file: #1", $realname);
        }
        return if $state->{not};
        return unless -e $realname or -l $realname;
        if ($state->replacing) {
                $state->log("Remember to update #1", $realname);
                $self->mark_dir($state);
        } elsif ($state->{extra}) {
                unlink($realname) or
                    $state->say("problem deleting extra file #1: #2", $realname, $!);
        } else {
                $state->log("You should also remove #1", $realname);
                $self->mark_dir($state);
        }
}

I can't understand much of this but it looks like if there is a file defined in the package as extra (and /etc/machine-id is so defined in the dbus package) and there exists such a file or a link to it, and you are replacing the package, you print that message. If you're not replacing, you just delete it.

Which suggests that this is not a message printed by accident because the script couldn't distinguish between deleting and replacing. It does seem to distinguish and this message is definitely intended for users doing a replacement.

"Remember to update" is possibly valid, but you also received extraneous messages to "rm -rf" two dconf structures. Those came from the @extraunexec entries in ports/devel/dconf/pkg/PLIST.