Ich have done an emerge -U world and 128 packetes haven benn upgraded. After this process I used etc-update to bring configration up to date. There where a lot of files as you can imagin. Well I've been lazy a littel bit and only search for /etc/make.conf which was not in the list an have overwritten the rest (-5). Well afterwards I had to clean up the mess I did. /etc/fstab /etc/rc.conf /etc/conf.d/net have all been overwritten with the default mess. Why? I should be possible for etc-update to recognize some files which don't need to be overwritten, like the examples above - there is no reason to overwrite /etc/fstab partions are not altered when installing new software, the same for /etc/conf.d/net dhcp or static IP adresses do not change when updating software. etc-update should be enhanced to recognize such files and alter them in a better way when options have been added or removed, but _not_ overwrite them...
sorry, but /etc is the heart of your system _EVERY_ file is really needed an important how about making backups ?
yeah, sometimes there are changes to the net system for example which is why update to /etc/{init,conf}.d/net would be needed sometimes the fstab changes (for example, see the /dev/shm thang) if you want backups, use /etc/dispatch-conf.conf, that's what it's there for
I know about the importance of /etc and I know how to configure all files in there, that is not the problem. But I dislike etc-update overwriting _my_ configurtaions, and I am much to lazy to manually edit 60 files because etc-update can't merge them automatically. What is needed is a etc-update which handles already existing configurations more clever. I cant see the reason to overwrite /etc/fstab for just adding /dev/shm, this is just adding a line to a file if needed...
i disagree with your opinion. debian does this the same way too, the only difference is, they do it in interactive dialogs
I think one should not only look at the others, but look forward. My thinkings about etc-update: - etc-update should merge "trivial changes" (does already) - it should then be possible to add lines (/dev/shm) for example - it sould also be possible to delete specifid lines - it should be possible to change a configvalue (quick security fix till real patch available - openSSH comes to my mind) - And it should be able to transform configuration done by users to a new synthax if that much changed
etc-update has the interactive merge option which takes care of most those issues and like i said, you already have the ability to backup you config files with dispatch.conf
It does. User error.
