From owner-freebsd-questions@freebsd.org  Sun Aug 30 16:29:43 2015
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Date: Sun, 30 Aug 2015 18:29:40 +0200
From: Polytropon <freebsd@edvax.de>
To: "William A. Mahaffey III" <wam@hiwaay.net>
Cc: FreeBSD Questions !!!! <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org>
Subject: Re: /etc files
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On Sun, 30 Aug 2015 10:43:59 -0453.75, William A. Mahaffey III wrote:
> I notice several files in my /etc directory whose filenames end in ':'. 
> Are these system files ? If not, can I usefully delete them :-) ? TIA & 
> have aq nice weekend.

Never heared of those... can you provide an example?
Maybe some timestamped backup files? But who would
store them in /etc? And why should they end in ':'?

Aside of file names, what do those files contain?
Can you show or tell?

And what are their creation timestamps?

As it has been suggested, add the "src" component
in /etc/freebsd-update.conf and fetch+install it,
then compare to /usr/src/etc, which is the "template"
from which /etc will be generated.

To summarize: Files ending in ':' probably do not
belong to /etc.



COM1: :-)



-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...