From owner-freebsd-stable Wed Oct 16 15:19:52 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7337137B401 for ; Wed, 16 Oct 2002 15:19:50 -0700 (PDT) Received: from apollo.backplane.com (apollo.backplane.com [216.240.41.2]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id EFF6E43E3B for ; Wed, 16 Oct 2002 15:19:49 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from dillon@apollo.backplane.com) Received: from apollo.backplane.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by apollo.backplane.com (8.12.5/8.12.4) with ESMTP id g9GMJYPQ017522; Wed, 16 Oct 2002 15:19:34 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from dillon@apollo.backplane.com) Received: (from dillon@localhost) by apollo.backplane.com (8.12.5/8.12.4/Submit) id g9GMJYEt017521; Wed, 16 Oct 2002 15:19:34 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from dillon) Date: Wed, 16 Oct 2002 15:19:34 -0700 (PDT) From: Matthew Dillon Message-Id: <200210162219.g9GMJYEt017521@apollo.backplane.com> To: Peter Jeremy Cc: Juergen Unger , freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Mergemaster [was: Re: Ifconfig config of gif tunnels] References: <004401c2742a$d6169d90$6501a8c0@VAIO650> <3DAC0045.4060201@Kernick.org> <3DAC163D.1060701@inode.at> <20021016193422.A51167@raven.addict.de> <20021016213038.GH32705@gsmx07.alcatel.com.au> Sender: owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG :>file via cvs. :>If the old existing file was never modified by an admin then :>let mergemaster silently install the new version. :>So all such files like /etc/periodic/*, /etc/mtree/*, /etc/default/* : :This is unlikely to cause a problem for /etc/mtree. It's probably :OK for /etc/periodic but is definitely dangerous for /etc/default. : :In the recent past, there have been changes to /etc/default/rc.conf :which inverted the run state of inetd (twice), significantly changed :the behaviour of the sendmail and changed the parameter meaning for :log_in_vain. These all potentially require corresponding changes to :/etc/rc.conf. Two mechanisms are usually proposed to allieviate the :need to read changes to /etc/defaults/rc.conf: :1) Read UPDATING :2) Explicitly include the wanted status of relevant variables (on or : off) in /etc/rc.conf. This is not correct. As long as the changes to the /etc/rc* files are synchronized with the changes to /etc/defaults/*, the expected behavior (at least as close as it is possible to get) will be maintained. That's the whole point. In the case of sendmail, the entire sendmail subsystem was changed for security reasons and now local mail delivery requires a daemon to be running. Since local mail delivery is expected to work even with sendmail_enable turned off, that feature was maintained. The sendmail daemon running when sendmail_enable is turned off is not externally visible on the network. I did not have to touch my /etc/rc.conf file for a single machine because I fully expected local mail delivery to work even on those boxes with sendmail disabled. The behavior for log_in_vain was maintained, as closely as possible given the new functionality, again assuming that you properly update both /etc/rc* and /etc/defaults/*. It may not be perfect, but it is a damn site better then if you were to update /etc/rc* separately from /etc/defaults/*. Regardless of whether you might have to make changes to your /etc/rc.conf, /etc/rc* and /etc/defaults/* should almost universally remain in synch with each other. I don't see how 'having to modify /etc/rc.conf' in any way implies that either /etc/rc* or /etc/defaults/* should not be updated. In the long run not keeping those two blocks in sync is going to produce far more problems. -Matt To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message