During dnf runs on Fedora 43 (dnf5-5.2.18.0-2.fc43.x86_64, rpm-6.0.1-1.fc43.x86_64) with etckeeper-dnf5 installed, anytime a package upgrade deletes a file that is under etckeeper control, a (harmless) error message is printed towards the end of the transaction output.
For example, a recent update to the forgejo-runner package no longer contained the file /etc/forgejo-runner/config.dist.yml that was present in previous versions of the package, and therefore tracked by etckeeper. When upgrading forgejo-runner using DNF 5 with etckeeper-dnf5 installed, the end of the transaction would include the line:
error: file /etc/forgejo-runner/config.dist.yml: No such file or directory
The message comes from an rpm command run by etckeeper in its post-install hooks. Specifically, the culprit is /etc/etckeeper/post-install.d/50vcs-commit in the get_changed_packages() function, which for RPM runs this branch:
if [ "$LOWLEVEL_PACKAGE_MANAGER" = rpm ]; then
# if output contains file path, file was not found
get_changes | sed 's/^/\/etc\//;s/\s*$//' | xargs -d '\n' rpm --qf '%{NAME}\n' -qf | grep -v "/etc/"
fi
The optimistic comment above the pipeline is unfortunately out of date, as rpm 6.0.1 (if not earlier) prints error messages about missing files to stderr instead of stdout. So, the line containing the filepath will not be in the output of the command, it will already have been displayed to the user.
Adding 2>&1 to the xargs command in the pipeline that runs rpm should resolve the issue.
2>/dev/nulland thegrep -vremoved instead. Its only purpose is to filter out the lines that are now only present on stderr, so there's no need to filter them from stdout at all, anymore.)I've since tested, and this does indeed work to suppress the messages about missing files during DNF transactions, in place of the code quoted above (from lines 41-44 of
/etc/etckeeper/post-install/50vcs-commit):