From owner-freebsd-doc Thu Nov 30 14:12:54 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-doc@freebsd.org Received: from mukappa.home.com (c576194-a.saltlk1.ut.home.com [24.20.97.5]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3E1A737B400 for ; Thu, 30 Nov 2000 14:12:51 -0800 (PST) Received: from mukappa.home.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by mukappa.home.com (8.11.1/8.11.1) with SMTP id eAUMCZi17137; Thu, 30 Nov 2000 15:12:39 -0700 (MST) (envelope-from mupi@mknet.org) From: Mike Porter Reply-To: mupi@mknet.org To: Rich Morin , freebsd-doc@freebsd.org Subject: Re: documenting nonexistent files Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2000 15:12:34 -0700 X-Mailer: KMail [version 1.1.94] Content-Type: text/plain References: <4910.975533445@axl.fw.uunet.co.za> <00113006572909.11309@mukappa.home.com> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: <0011301512340A.11309@mukappa.home.com> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: owner-freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Thu, 30 Nov 2000, Rich Morin wrote: > > I have refrained from including any descriptive information > that would cause the format to expand past one line per item. > My feeling is that the README2.examples file (when created) > and the comments in the example files themselves are better > suited to deal with detailed (read, long-winded) explanations. > That sounds like a good idea. > Sorry; I wasn't clear. There should be an "example-saving" script > that runs when the FreeBSD distribution is being build. Otherwise, > the files in /usr/share/examples/etc won't be reliably present, let > alone current copies of the originals. > If such a script is implemented into build- or install-world, then I think my prior comments about which version to use could be safely ignored. Otherwise, this is exactly the sort of problem that can arise if a user tries to copy something from /usr/share/examples/etc/defaults to /etc/defaults when the file already exists in /etc/defaults. I guess in theory mergemaster should be able to take care of such things, but one cannot always count on such "automated" functions to happen correctly. Adding functionality to mergemaster might be easier; locally, it should be possible using MM_PRE_COMMAND or MM_EXIT_COMMAND to have mergemaster also process /usr/share/examples/etc. > > localtime + binary reference file for localtime(3) I remeber you asking about this file.... see also tzfile(5). From tzfile(5): " The time zone information files used by tzset(3) begin with the magic characters ``TZif'' to identify them as time zone information files," - From "less /etc/localtime" (after answering "yes" the check of your sanity....): "TZif^@^@^@^@^^@^@...." Unless I miss my guess, this file is created for you by sysinstall when you set you time zone, and is then used to help c programs process time via localtime() and its relatives. tzfile(5) explains a lot about what the various bits mean, but since it isn't really pracitcal to edit this file by hand, I'm not sure what you can actually DO with this information. > skel / ??? /etc/skel is the "traditional" (or "old") location for the initial users home directory as created by adduser. (see adduser.conf) FreeBSD uses /usr/share/skel instead, but most Linuxen still use /etc/skel. (perhaps "old"="SysV-ish" and "freeBSD"="BSD-ish" would be more accurate an assesment (at least would tend to explain why linux uses that and BSD doesn't, as Linux is typically SysV-ish)? Someone with more BSD experience than me would have to comment on that.) In any case, /etc/skel (or /usr/share/skel) is where you put things that need to appear by default in new user's home directories (for example, a system-wide .login or .profile or .cshrc. This is also a convienient place to have ~user/public_html linked to the web servers root directory. I think given that freeBSD's adduser defaults to /usr/share/skel you might safely indicate that it is (obs.). (I'll leave it to your editorial skills to condense that to a one-liner...) ( oh yeah, hope that helped.....) mike -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.3 (FreeBSD) Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org iEYEARECAAYFAjom0NMACgkQZ7GovTQbIm67XwCgiOCikt3uDoJBKK4/4/49CiKZ kjYAnjlI2r05uuCXuLiGmECOT7Ckxgah =k3Sg -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-doc" in the body of the message