Bug 144647 – Request: /etc/make.conf on install CD's to indicate user is editing the wrong file.

• Product: Gentoo Hosted Projects
• Status: RESOLVED FIXED

[Description Allen Brooker (AllenJB) 2006-08-21 08:16:13 UTC]

On occaision while installing gentoo, before getting to the chroot stage, I've edited /etc/make.conf instead of /mnt/gentoo/etc/make.conf by accident and not realised until later.

A simple solution to help users avoid doing this would be to include a short make.conf with something like the following message on the install CD's:
# This is not the make.conf file you should be editing
# Please edit /mnt/gentoo/etc/make.conf instead.

[Comment 1 Allen Brooker (AllenJB) 2006-08-21 08:23:37 UTC]

It's also been suggested that other files users are asked to edit during the install process should be marked in a similar way. This would help prevent users from forgetting they're no longer in a chroot - for example when they switch VTs or perhaps when an inexperianced user tries to correct an error they made during installation.

[Comment 2 Chris Gianelloni (RETIRED) 2006-08-21 13:47:51 UTC]

We "resolved" this by telling the user to change the prompt.

I'm reassigning this to catalyst, since it really needs to be done there, but we really aren't responsible for making sure the user doesn't screw themselves, and there's really only so much hand-holding that can be done before we're wasting our time for little benefit.

[Comment 3 Chris Gianelloni (RETIRED) 2006-11-03 13:54:33 UTC]

OK.  We now do this in subversion... so hopefully we'll have people edit the right file...

[Comment 4 Chris Gianelloni (RETIRED) 2006-12-06 13:44:56 UTC]

Fixed in 2.0.1