Date: Thu, 10 May 2001 19:07:20 -0700 From: "Kevin Oberman" <oberman@es.net> To: Nuno Teixeira <nuno.teixeira@pt-quorum.com> Cc: freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: mergemaster DEFAULT but STABLE? Message-ID: <200105110207.f4B27Kc30622@ptavv.es.net> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 11 May 2001 01:21:08 BST." <20010511010844.A317-100000@gateway.bogus>
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--Multipart_Thu_May_10_19:06:30_2001-1 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Here is my tutorial on running mergemaster. Please send any comments/complaints back to me if you think it useful. R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) Ernest O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) E-mail: oberman@es.net Phone: +1 510 486-8634 --Multipart_Thu_May_10_19:06:30_2001-1 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="mergemaster.txt" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Mergemaster-Why and How The purpose of mergemaster is to allow changes to files that are frequently/normally configured by an system administrator. These are mostly in the /etc tree. When you run mergemaster, it will build a copy of the root environment, normally in /var/tmp/temproot. Once this is done, you will get a list of files you have on your system that are not in the FreeBSD distribution. These are files that are not part of the distribution (e.g. passwd), files installed by X11 or files you have created. It's a good idea to scan over this list, but I'll admit that I seldom bother. Then you will start getting the output of "diff | more" for all files that are different from the new version. If the file is one you have not customized, you almost certainly want to select 'i' to install the newer file. You may also get some files that don't exist on your system because they were added to the tree since your prior installation. You almost certainly want to install 'i' these, too. If you have a reason to not want to install the new version or make any changes to the old version, choose 'd'. When you get to a file that you have edited, you probably want to do merge. If you select 'm', you will get an sdiff display where you can blend lines from your existing file (on the left) and the new file (on the right) by entering 'l' or 'r'. If the changes are such that simply selecting 'l' or 'r' does not do the right thing, you can choose 'e' to bring up the file in an editor so that you can make it look exactly like you want it to look. Always include the RCS version line from the new (right) version. This will keep you from needing to go through this every time you run mergemaster, even if there have been no changes made to the CVS version of the file. I always look at the differences, even though I know I will be selecting the new version. There is a lot of easily understandable information about changes in the system and it might cause you to realize that something is messed up in the current installation or something new that you want to learn more about. The first time you run mergemaster is the worst. After you have done your merges, future runs won't ask about the most files because the RCS versions will not be changed (unless, of course, the distribution file HAS changed.) Running mergemaster is usually a pretty quick operation if you update your system often as there are fewer changes to deal with on any run. I usually update at least once a month and sometime more often if I see patches that look like they are relevant to me. --Multipart_Thu_May_10_19:06:30_2001-1-- To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message
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