On Thursday 18 September 2003 00:08, Ian Tindale wrote: > On Wednesday 17 September 2003 3:50 pm, Jason Stubbs wrote: > > On Wednesday 17 September 2003 21:27, Joshua Banks wrote: > > > LOL...... > > > > > > Do I need to be a computer programmer now to figure out what files I > > > can update safely and which ones I should ignore, keep, > > > throw-out...ect.ect..???? > > > > You don't need to be a programmer at all - that's much harder. What you > > do need is to be comfortable with config files; there's no other way to > > survive with Gentoo at the moment and possibly not in the future either. > > Textual config files are the heart of GNU software and most *NIX > > software. > > However, it's got to be said that because of etc-update's tendency to show > you both what are obviously config files as well as what are obviously > computer programs, there's a demarcation that would be beneficial to > implement in future versions. Most of what whizzes past in etc-update is > some form of computer program, I've noticed, and I really don't think it > should expect me to be reprogramming some arcane part of the system, > whereas a config file, such as fstab, make.conf or rc.conf is my > responsibility because I altered it in the first place.
I haven't seen anything that "are obviously a computer programs". The closest I've seen is /etc/postfix/saslpass.db which is a binary file - but not a program. Other than that, everything has been a standard textual config file. The most programming-like config file I know of is sendmail.cf but even that provides sendmail.mc to help you automatically configure it. If you can point me to a config file that seems to be a computer program, I'd be very interested. > I'm just growing out of the phase where I'd let etc-update do everything > for me, and then take the remaining two weeks to get my system back up > running. Now, etc-update isn't such an ordeal. The interactive merging > thing never works, though, so I keep copies of the whole system on another > drive, and derive the old un-updated config information from that. The > computer programs themselves aren't my concern, so I let etc-update just do > everything, but take note of what it updates. If I recognise it, then I'll > copy the original back as soon as etc-update finishes. That's the best way > of doing it. Personally, I think that's the worst way of doing it; there's too much chance of human error. If you can't or don't like to use the interactive update that etc-update provides, you're better to update by hand as you're doing but doing it before overwriting everything with etc-update. i.e. instead of merging /etc/make.conf with /oldconfig/make.conf, merge /etc/make.conf with / etc/._cfg0000_make.conf and then delete ._cfg0000_make.conf. After you've updated all your interesting files and deleted the "new" versions, you can then (usually but not always) safely use etc-update to overwrite any other config files. Jason -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
