[pkg-ntp-maintainers] Bug#380233: package transition leaves a mess of old ntp-server and ntp-simple stuff, including dangerous purge possibilities

[Max Bowsher]

Package: ntp
Version: 1:4.2.2+dfsg-1
Severity: important

Setting severity to important for now, since I cannot actually point to
a specific policy directive, but this should quite possibly be elevated
to serious.

Upgrading to the 4.2.2 ntp packages, which merge the ntp-server and
ntp-simple packages into the ntp package leaves the old packages in the
'config-files' state.  In particular, this leaves active cron scripts
under the name 'ntp-server', which are then duplicated by the new 'ntp'
scripts. This may lead to weird unintentional behaviours as various lag
rotation jobs are run twice, once by the old, once by the new scripts.

Additionally, if an incautious sysadmin was to purge the old packages,
then the old ntp-simple postinst script will cause serious damage to the
existing ntp installation, in particular, deleting the 'ntp' user, as
well as deleting the /var/lib/ntp/ and /var/log/ntpstats/ directories.