On 2013-04-07, Tanstaafl <tansta...@libertytrek.org> wrote:
> On 2013-04-07 6:55 AM, Neil Bothwick <n...@digimed.co.uk> wrote:
>> On Sat, 06 Apr 2013 17:14:00 -0400, Tanstaafl wrote:
>>
>>>> Well, in my case 80-net-names-slot.rules was neither empty,
>>>> nor symlink to dev null, but FULL OF COMMENTS AND NOTING ELSE,
>>>
>>> Well... even I know enough to reason that 'empty' in this context means
>>> no UNcommented lines. Comments are just that, and if there are no
>>> UNcommented lines, then nothing is active, hence it is effectively
>>> 'empty'.
>>
>> But not actually empty. If you are correct, and I suspect you are, then
>> the news item is poorly worded. No effective content is not the same as
>> no content at all.
>
> Oh, I agree that it was poorly worded, I was just pointing out that it
> was kind of silly to take quite it so literally...
OK, so parts of the news item are not to be taken literally, and other
parts are. Perhaps it would be wise to mark the sections so we can
tell the difference? ;)
> Every sysadmin knows (or should know) that a config file full of
> nothing but comments isn't going to do *anything* other than provide
> whatever defaults the program is designed to use in such a case.
It's entirely possible for udev (or any other program) to check
whether a file is empty or not and behave differently depending on
that test. And if it is explicitly stated that something depends on a
file being "empty", that's what I assume was indended. Of course it's
possible to determine via experimentation that "nothing but comments"
produces the same behavior as "empty". Of course we all figured that
out after we realized that udev wasn't behaving as was described in
the news entry and started reading other documentation.
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