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

[Horror Vacui]

On Thu, 5 Feb 2004 02:54:01 -0800
Drake wrote:

> On Thu, Feb 05, 2004 at 10:48:35AM +0100, in
> <200402051048.36660.pauldv@g.o>, Paul de Vrieze
> <pauldv@g.o> wrote:
> >
> > It is never ever a
> > good idea to overwrite the current version with the config-protected
> >
> > one. The only alternative solution I see would be to patch
> > etc-update to automatically ignore/remove these updates.
>
> I have another alternative for you: don't overwrite your configs.
>
> Seriously, though, the real blocker here is that *sometimes* we
> *need* to make a distro-wide change to something like fstab. The
> config-protect/etc-update mechanism is currently the only method we
> have of distributing these changes without breaking users systems.

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 ;)

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.

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.


Cheers

-- 
Horror Vacui

Registered Linux user #257714

Go get yourself... counted: http://counter.li.org/
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