Date: Fri, 19 Apr 2002 15:58:55 -0700 From: "Kevin Oberman" <oberman@es.net> To: Doug Barton <DougB@FreeBSD.org> Cc: freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: *** HEAD'S UP *** Message-ID: <20020419225855.E7E575D05@ptavv.es.net> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 19 Apr 2002 15:37:27 PDT." <20020419153704.M17393-100000@zoot.corp.yahoo.com>
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> Date: Fri, 19 Apr 2002 15:37:27 -0700 (PDT) > From: Doug Barton <DougB@FreeBSD.org> > Sender: owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG > > 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: oberman@es.net Phone: +1 510 486-8634 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message
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