> Date: Fri, 19 Apr 2002 15:37:27 -0700 (PDT) > From: Doug Barton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > Howdy, > > Apparently my last message wasn't clear enough, for which I > apologize. In addition to the general, non-life-threatening changes to > /etc I did recently, a few more fundamental things have changed as well, > specifically to /etc/defaults/rc.conf. Rather than focus on the specifics, > I'd like to suggest a more general solution. > > I highly recommend backing up your existing rc.conf[.local], and > copying /etc/defaults/rc.conf to /etc/rc.conf. Then, go through the whole > file, and explicitly include your choices for anything that you care > about, whether they are the defaults or not. In this way, you can be sure > that the system will always behave the way you want it to. In addition to > this, I generally include the settings that are specific to the individual > machine (like hostname, gateway, ifconfig_) in /etc/rc.conf.local. That > way it's easier to blat the rc.conf file periodically. > > I also added an option to mergemaster to compare your > rc.conf[.local] stuff to what's in /etc/defaults/rc.conf after you're done > updating. To take advantage of that, use 'mergemaster -C', or 'echo > COMP_CONFS=yes >> .mergemasterrc'. What this won't show you is differences > to the defaults that you don't have in /etc/rc.conf[.local]. For that, > you're expected to pay attention to the diff of /etc/defaults/rc.conf as > you install it. :) > > Any questions, comments, or suggestions... fire away.
OK. You asked for it... I really hate to see the suggestion that people copy files from /etc/defaults to /etc. This really breaks the paradigm of having only changes in defaults in /etc so that defaults can be changed with a normal system update. While the new mergemaster option helps with this, I would really rather not see rc.conf (and other files) become large and not trivial to scan over. A suggestion to scan through /etc/defaults/rc.conf is not unreasonable. Of course, people SHOULD pay attention to whet mergemaster has to say, but even I have messed up when updating an important server and not watching all of the things mergemaster showed in an effort to get the system back on-line quickly. R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) Ernest O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone: +1 510 486-8634 To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message
