From owner-freebsd-questions Tue Jul 20 15: 7:51 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from dt011n65.san.rr.com (dt011n65.san.rr.com [204.210.13.101]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D5E3F14D3E for ; Tue, 20 Jul 1999 15:07:46 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from Doug@gorean.org) Received: from localhost (doug@localhost) by dt011n65.san.rr.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id PAA27688; Tue, 20 Jul 1999 15:07:42 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from Doug@gorean.org) Date: Tue, 20 Jul 1999 15:07:42 -0700 (PDT) From: Doug X-Sender: doug@dt011n65.san.rr.com To: Adam Nealis Cc: freebsd-questions Subject: Re: when to use mergemaster? In-Reply-To: <3794B65C.113AA944@csl.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Tue, 20 Jul 1999, Adam Nealis wrote: > I'm nervous enough when updating a live system, and although > mergemaster looks just the ticket, could someone tell me > when it should be used? Well someone else already referred you to nik's tutorial, however he has no mention of mergemaster. He and I also disagree on when exactly to update /etc. At bare minimum you should check /etc/make.conf, /etc/group and /etc/master.passwd _before_ you do the make world. I add master.passwd in there because at different times people talk about adding a user to the system, although I don't remember it ever happening. There have been times in the past where a certain group was required for the build to finish, but the last time was a long time ago. Still, better safe than sorry, especially if you are trying to minimize downtime on a live system. If you want to be totally safe, do: 1. Check those 3 files 2. Do your make world thing 3. Make new kernel 4. Run mergemaster 5. Reboot Of course, I'm leaving out a large number of specific steps, not the least of which is that before you start you MUST have a good backup, and you MUST test it to be sure that you can recover the data from your backup media. Personally I run mergemaster, check make.conf, make world, make new kernel then reboot. In all the hundreds of times I have made the world I've had to restore /etc from backup once, and gotten my system hosed mid build once, but that was on -current and purely a result of bad timing. If you're doing an upgrade on a live system, I'd go for the ultra safe alternative, but you have to make that decision yourself. Good luck, Doug PS, did I mention how important good backups are? -- On account of being a democracy and run by the people, we are the only nation in the world that has to keep a government four years, no matter what it does. -- Will Rogers To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message