Re: postinstall wiped out my /etc/rc changes

["matthew sporleder" <msporleder%gmail.com@localhost>]

On Fri, May 2, 2008 at 11:37 AM, Steven M. Bellovin 
<smb%cs.columbia.edu@localhost> wrote:
>
> On Fri, 2 May 2008 17:23:51 +0200
>  Alan Barrett <apb%cequrux.com@localhost> wrote:
>
>  > On Fri, 02 May 2008, Sverre Froyen wrote:
>  > > etcupdate runs postinstall which prompted me to run postinstall fix
>  > > rc.  Doing so reinstalled the original /etc/rc and wiped out my
>  > > local modifications.
>  >
>  > Yes, that's what "postinstall fix rc" is designed to do.  The output
>  > from the earlier "postinstall check" (which was run by etcupdate)
>  > would have included messages about which source files differed from
>  > your installed files.
>  >
>  > If there's a bug here, it's that the messages printed by "postinstall
>  > check" were not clear enough to alert you to what would happen when
>  > you ran "postinstall fix rc".  I expect that patches to improve that
>  > situation would be welcome.
>  >
>  I think it's more complex than that.  It isn't obvious -- at least not
>  to me -- which files in /etc are "owned" by the system (and hence are
>  fair game for auto-replacement), and which are owned by the
>  administrator.  (I raised similar questions a few months ago about the
>  power management scripts.)  We need a clear, clean way to make that
>  distinction, and to make it obvious to the community.
>


Although it probably isn't universally true- things in section 5 of
the manual should be edited by users (rc.conf and motd for example)
and things in section 8 (/etc/rc and fsck, for example) should not.
(the various intro pages should definitely be kept up to date with all
the options, anyway)