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

NAME

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

SYNOPSIS

       ucfr [options] <Package> <Path to configuration file>

DESCRIPTION

       Where  Package is the package associated with the configuration file (and, in some sense, its owner), and Path to configuration file is the
       full path to the location (usually under /etc) where the configuration file lives, and is potentially modified by the end user. Please note
       that  usually  this means that we register actual files, and not symbolic 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 facilities 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 idempo-
       tent, 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 registry. 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 configuration file are removed from the registry, whether or not the package name
	      matches. This action is idempotent, 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 association 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 single 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 (assum-
       ing 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 registry 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 <srivasta@debian.org>, for the Debian GNU/Linux system.

Debian								    Feb 16 2018 							   UCFR(1)