Giacomo Vacca

It took me more than expected (and in fact someone found it for me) to explain why a file installed by a debian package and not listed inside debian/conffiles was handled as a standard configuration file. The file is installed in a subdirectory of /etc/, so intuitively you may assume it must be considered as a configuration file, although this wasn't clearly stated in a document until I read this from Debian New Maintainer's Guide , chapter 5: Since debhelper V3, dh_installdeb(1) will automatically flag any files under the /etc directory as conffiles, so if your program only has conffiles there you do not need to specify them in this file. For most package types, the only place there is (and should be conffiles) is under /etc and so this file doesn't need to exist. The conclusion is that if you install a file in a subfolder of /etc/, you don't need to list it inside debian/conffiles.

This is a concept that I've always found interesting. This evening I recalled it and found a blog article with other classifications of order of ignorance. This is the version I already knew: 0OI: I have Zeroth Order Ignorance (0OI) when I know something and can demonstrate my lack of ignorance in some tangible form, such as by building a system that satisfies the user. 1OI: Lack of Knowledge. I have First Order Ignorance (1OI) when I don’t know something and I can readily identify that fact. 2OI: Lack of Awareness. I have Second Order Ignorance (2OI) when I don’t know that I don’t know something. That is to say, not only am I ignorant of something (I have 1OI), I am unaware of that fact. 3OI: Lack of Process. I have Third Order Ignorance (3OI) when I don’t know of a suitably efficient way to find out that I don’t know that I don’t know something. So I am unable to resolve my 2OI. In my words: Level 0 : I know the problem and I can solve it because I've already done it before. ...