Re: [gentoo-user] Old devfs files in /etc

[Dale]

Holly Bostick wrote:

>There is, of course, "an option to tell it to"; you just don't know
>about it :-) .
>
>

You're kidding right.  Something that I don't know about, yea right. 
LOL LOL  Treat me like a sponge, I'm absorbing your knowledge, I hope
anyway.  I have been using Gentoo a while and have a little
understanding of how it works but not much.  I just know it is better
than winders. 

>You might want to have a closer look at the Gentoo Documentation pages,
>most specifically
>
>Gentoo Linux Documentation -- Environment Variables at
>http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?part=2&chap=5 .
>
>

That link didn't make sense.  That the right chapter?  May just be me.  LOL

>In any case, the deal is configuration files are protected by default.
>That means that when you unmerge a program (or merge a new version of
>the same program), the configuration files will not be automatically
>overwritten (or deleted, for that matter). This saves you trouble,
>because it doesn't screw up your config, if you later reinstall the
>program, or when you update a program that had a complex configuration.
>However, it also means that things such as what happened to you can
>happen (config files that you want deleted don't get deleted automatically).
>
>

It is no suprise that I didn't know about it, yet.  I did a man emerge
and didn't see it.  Is it a newer version that I don't have yet?  I run
stable packages.

>But the thing is, such files are important enough that they shouldn't be
>just deleted like it's nothing. That's the Gentoo design and the Gentoo
>way; an action like deleting /etc/devfsd can have sweeping consequences
>if the system is not prepared to pick up the ball with udev-- forcing
>you to delete it manually is both a way of making sure that you know you
>did it, and also making sure you know what you're doing before you do it
>(90% of the users ask the list before taking any action, which is fine--
>we *want* people to know what they're doing and have a healthy respect
>for their own power to bork their system, so good you ask first!)
>
>

I have been running udev for a while and it seems to be working fine. 
Time for devfs to go.

>In any case, yes you can override the setting (of *course*, this is
>Gentoo!) to delete certain (or all) protected files after an unmerge of
>various programs; but now you have to look up how to do that, and that
>means you have to read a bit about the consequences of your proposed
>action before taking it (since you don't know how to take it before you
>read a bit), and then you have a much better chance of not doing
>something that's going to come back and bite you in the butt later, but
>will instead make your system more effective for your usage pattern for
>the future.
>Holly
>
>
I cheat.  When I know I am about to delete some config files that I
worry about, I back-up my /etc directory.  I save it until I reboot a
few times just to make sure.  Smart huh?

Thanks for the help.

Dale

-- 
To err is human, I'm most certainly human.

 

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