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Date:      Wed, 26 Jun 2013 01:07:29 -0600 (MDT)
From:      Mike Brown <mike@skew.org>
To:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Should I be able to use mergemaster with freebsd-update?
Message-ID:  <201306260707.r5Q77TBn089805@chilled.skew.org>
In-Reply-To: <201306260222.r5Q2MdJO087350@chilled.skew.org>

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I wrote:
> The main problem this time is that I'm not so lucky with the password files, 
> because for 8.4, freebsd-update has fetched new, stock .db files to put in 
> /etc.

Whoa, sorry, I misspoke here. 


freebsd-update asked me, after the merges, to approve unspecified differences 
in pwd.db and spwd.db.  I assumed that it had fetched those files as part of 
the 8.4 distribution. But http://svnweb.freebsd.org/base/release/8.4.0/etc/ 
seems to indicate that's not what happened; only master.passwd was changed.


I'm looking through the freebsd-update code now. I see it does actually do 
some special handling of master.passwd, but not until you do your 
'freebsd-update install'. At that point, it will look at /etc/master.passwd 
and see if it's newer than /etc/pwd.db or /etc/spwd.db, and it will run 
pwd_mkdb. It doesn't use the -p flag, so I guess it doesn't care about passwd.

This pwd_mkdb run didn't happen for me, though, since my 'freebsd-update 
install' run didn't actually put the new master.passwd file, or anything else, 
into /etc yet. I thought it would, but I don't understand it, really. So I 
don't see how it's supposed to work.


To summarize:

1. I did the initial 'freebsd-update -r 8.4-RELEASE upgrade'
2. When prompted, I did all the merges it needed me to do by hand.
3. When prompted, I approved all the diffs. Two of the diffs were unspecified 
    pwd.db & spwd.db changes, which caused me some alarm.
4. I looked in the staging area and found that these were empty files.
5. I looked in /etc and nothing new had been placed there yet.
6. I did the 'freebsd-update install' and checked /etc again; still nothing.
7. Afraid of rebooting with bogus password database files staged, I generated
    proper pwd.db, spwd.db, and passwd files myself, and put them in the
    staging area.

Next step, I think, is reboot, before another 'freebsd-update install' run.
I'm worried something is still amiss, though, so I'm holding off for now. :(



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