Re: [gentoo-user] etc-update You've got to be kidding me!!
My rule of thumb - if I haven't touched it myself then I turn etc-update loose. Usually it's hosts, make.conf, fstab and files that you have to edit and setup that I do manually. Most of the files below you can let etc-update have it's way. I don't know about dispatch-conf. On Wed, 17 Sep 2003 05:27:02 -0700 (PDT) Joshua Banks [EMAIL PROTECTED] 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.. Now I know I'm new to this, but this seems a little ridiculous. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
RE: [gentoo-user] etc-update You've got to be kidding me!!
Joshua Banks [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 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.. Now I know I'm new to this, but this seems a little ridiculous. I agree. The only files that I'm familiar with are the ones that I touched durning the initial install. I guess that might be an answer. If etc-update can check (md5, or otherwise) that the file has not been changed since the last update, it can suggest to update all those files in one go. That will leave you with just the files that might require human judgement. I can't think of an example where you would not want to update a configuration file that you did not change yourself. (Oops, that is three negatives in one sentence...) Gwendolyn. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] etc-update You've got to be kidding me!!
On 14:27, mercoledì 17 settembre 2003, Joshua Banks wrote: 1) /etc/dispatch-conf.conf /etc/._cfg_dispatch-conf.conf Don't know, I don't use it. 2) /etc/issue /etc/._cfg_issue I kept mine, but if you replace it with the suggested one it won't hurt too much. This file contains the text that is displayed when an user login via VT (i.e., something like welcome to host.domain.com (Linux i686 2.4.22) on tty6). In case you had customized this a lot, it's better that you don't let it be overwritten. 3) /etc/init.d/bootmisc /etc/init.d/._cfg_bootmisc [cut] 14) /etc/init.d/serial /etc/init.d/._cfg_serial These are all boot-time scripts, that start various services or prepare things for the system to run correctly. My little humble advice is: if you didn't modify (or customize) the previous versions, then it's relatively safe to replace them with the new versions (I did, and had no problems). The new versions introduce new functionalities, like better RAID handling and so on, and shouldn't affect normal system behavior. Of course, it's always better not to do a blind upgrade, but instead ask etc-update to show you what it's doing, at least to have a rough understanding of the changes/improvements. Bye -- Air conditioned environment - Do not open Windows. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] etc-update You've got to be kidding me!!
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. Redhat, Mandrake, etc just provide graphical tools that edit the config files. If you don't know what a config file is about, first check out the man page for it. If there's no man page, check out the man page for the application that uses the config file. If you don't know what application the config file is from, use one of the tools to find out. If you don't know the tools, ask somebody else - I always use find and grep of /var/db/pkg to find what package a file belongs to. Information is power, right? Gentoo (presently) goes along with and doesn't hide any of the information. It only helps to streamline it. That is why so many power users gravitate to it. If your going to survive in this sort of linux environment (ie with very little hand-holding) you going to have to learn how to read man pages and then to just give it a try... Jason -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] etc-update You've got to be kidding me!!
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'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. -- Ian Tindale -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] etc-update You've got to be kidding me!!
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/._cfg_make.conf and then delete ._cfg_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
