Re: [gentoo-dev] baselayout redefines /etc/fstab

[Michael Andreen]

On Thursday 05 February 2004 12.39, Horror Vacui wrote:
> On Thu, 5 Feb 2004 02:54:01 -0800
> Well, if users don't overwrite their config, the distro-wide change
> fails. I once managed to fsck up my fstab, and I'm not allowing
> etc-update to do anything to the files I've changed since. If in doubt,
> I keep the old and discard the new file. The interactive-merge is a bit
> confusing to use - sadly, I can't think of a better way to do it, so
> that's about as constructive a comment as I can give ;)

Yes, the default interactive merge isn't very friendly, but you can use 
something nicer (like vimdiff if you're a vim user). That will help you see 
the difference better so you see if there is something that could be nice to 
copy over to your old config file, when you're done with that just delete the 
update.

> I can't help thinking that for distro-wide changes a diff would do a
> better job than the complete file, at least for files the type of fstab,
> where overwriting the file is in most cases sure to break something.
> Patching the files would be much safer, perhaps even safe enough to be
> done automagically.

Maybe, but from when should the diff be? This could potentially be dangerous 
if someone updates from a very old copy, where there has been several changes 
between. And the idea of merging anything automatically sounds a bit scary.

> In any case I don't see a reason why portage should try to "force" a
> (non-functional) default fstab upon me, even if there are no changes
> between the old default version I changed and the new one.

It doesn't force it upon you, it puts a hidden file in your /etc that isn't 
used by anything, if you don't want it just remove it, if you're interrested 
in seeing what the difference is, use a better diff editor as I stated above. 
The current solutions gives everyone the choice to do whatever they want with 
the update, which I believe is a good thing.

/Michael


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