Dealing with .rpmnew and .rpmsave files
Nobody ever thinks to mention .rpmnew and .rpmsave extensions to new users of Fedora or Red Hat derivatives. Instead, most users suddenly discover that these files are accumulating on their hard drives, or notice a fleeting message on the screen about them during a version upgrade. Many, I suspect, simply leave them alone, uncertain what to do about them. Yet dealing with them is simply a matter of using a few basic commands, and can be a necessity for ensuring trouble-free upgrades in the future.
Both .rpmnew and .rpmsave files are the result of a cautious upgrade policy in .RPM packages. When an upgrade includes changes to a default configuration file, instead of overwriting the configuration file on your system -- and possibly nuking the changes you have made -- the package will write one of these file types. An .rpmnew file contains the new default configuration file and leaves your original configuration file untouched. By contrast, and .rpmsave file is a copy of your original configuration file, which has been replaced by the new default file.
Which file a package creates is up to the discretion of the package maintainer. However, if the recent upgrade to Fedora 8 is typical, almost all maintainers choose to use rpmnew files, which is the less obtrusive choice. After all, if you have added, for instance, multiple keyboard configurations to /etc/X11/xorg.conf, the last thing you want is for an upgrade to overwrite your modifications and force you to redo them.
However, no matter which file is added to your system, you still need to know to know how to deal with it.
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