| Summary: | Verbose descriptions of etc-update commands | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Product: | Portage Development | Reporter: | Andy Kriger <andy.kriger> |
| Component: | Tools | Assignee: | Portage team <dev-portage> |
| Status: | VERIFIED LATER | ||
| Severity: | enhancement | CC: | andre.hinrichs, listen, sf, tomek32, tools-portage |
| Priority: | High | ||
| Version: | unspecified | ||
| Hardware: | All | ||
| OS: | Linux | ||
| Whiteboard: | |||
| Package list: | Runtime testing required: | --- | |
| Bug Depends on: | 93874 | ||
| Bug Blocks: | |||
how did you even find out about the -5 option? i checked the man page for etc-update and it doesn't mention args. --help also doesn't do anything for me. The -5 option is mentioned in the etc-update instructions. After etc-update gives you a list of files that need updating, you have a prompt instructing you to enter the number of the file you want to update. The instructions for the prompt mention other options (-1, -3, -5) with brief explanations. From my reading of it (admittedly quick), -5 looked like it would update the files in the list (not all the files in etc) w/o prompting me for each one. we dont do (2) because we provide it as an option read /etc/dispatch-conf.conf *** Bug 49343 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. *** *** Bug 69221 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. *** *** Bug 69680 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. *** Putting a hold on feature requests for portage as they are drowning out the bugs. Most of these features should be available in the next major version of portage. But for the time being, they are just drowning out the major bugs and delaying the next version's progress. Any bugs that contain patches and any bugs for etc-update or dispatch-conf can be reopened. Sorry, I'm just not good enough with bugzilla. ;) 1) is obsolete by now I think 2) see comment #3 (plus about a dozen other alternatives |
It is possible using etc-update for a user to destroy their configuration. As a newbie, I did not realize that etc-update using -5 would overwrite EVERY file in /etc (not just those that had changed in the last emerge). I would suggest the following enhancements to etc-update... 1) More verbose explanation of what each option does ('mv -i' is not enough) 2) Automatic backup of /etc before doing a catastrophic change Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: after an emerge that changes etc files, run etc-update with the -5 option Actual Results: all etc files were overwritten Expected Results: only the etc files that had changed in the previous emerge should have been overwritten I have seen a number of posts in the gentoo msg boards dealing with similar problems using etc-update. That would seem to indicate a problem with the tool and not the users. Sometimes it is simple newness to Linux (not realizing that the /etc directory needs to be backed up frequently) or not reading the instructions fully. However, it seems that etc-update can be improved to eliminate these problems in the future.