The rpmnew is the new default file for the program that got updated. It
will Not contain all of the changes you made to that file in setting up
that program for your particular system. If you replace the old copy
with this new one (mv gabble.conf.rpmnew gabble.conf) you will lose all
of the changes you made to gabble.conf previously to get the program
gabble to behave the way you wanted it to. (for example, if you replaced
wpa_supplicant.conf with wpa_supplicant.conf.rpmnew you would lose all
the passwords and wireless AP names stored in wpa_supplicant.conf. Since
I have about a hundred such setups--I travel a lot-- it would be a
disaster to lose them all.
However what you can do is to do a diff between them, and stick in the
new stuff in the .rpmnew file into the old file. if you (or your OS
never made any changes to the file, then repace the old with the new.
If you have no idea what that file is for (you have no idea what
gabble.conf is), do the diff to see what changes there are between the
two and then decide what you want to do. swap the new for the old, leave
the old in place, or copy the important changes in the new to the old,
or copy the changes made in the old by you or the OS to the new.
Post by TJPost by faeychildI have always wondered what to do with these files particularly when I
don't understand the application they apply to.
Clearly they're included for a reason.
By accepting in ignorance could I cause mayhem?
Regards
These usually concern config files, which Mageia avoids replacing
without user permission if possible.
Mayhem? That may be a little strong, but it depends on how heavily
customized your system is.
For example, the recent sddm update included a new config file.
Accepting it replaced the existing file, re-setting any settings you
might have made to the defaults. In my case, that meant autologin was
turned off, and I had to go to MCC to turn it back on again.
That was relatively benign, but another time I accepted an rpmnew for
sane, and promptly lost ability to access my scanner. I had to
re-install it to get it back.
Another sddm update, I think for Mageia 8, fixed a problem with the
defaults that sddm wasn't remembering the last user to log in. If you
left it alone, you had to input the user name each time. Accepting the
new config file fixed that, but again, any defaults that you may have
changed before the update had to be changed back again.
So, like many things, the answer of should you or shouldn't you do
anything is "it depends." Usually, the safest option is to leave it
alone, but by doing so you may miss out on fixing the issue that
prompted the update.
TJ