freebsd-update questions

[Andrew Gould]

On Wed, Jan 28, 2015 at 1:15 AM, Matthew Seaman <
m.seaman at infracaninophile.co.uk> wrote:

> On 2015/01/28 02:50, Andrew Gould wrote:
> > On Mon, Jan 12, 2015 at 12:46 PM, Brian W. <brian at brianwhalen.net>
> wrote:
> >
> >> A key thing to watch for in the conf files is that markers will be put
> in
> >> place so you can see what's new; those need to be deleted.
> >>
> > When I attempted an upgrade to 10.1-RELEASE, I got a message that certain
> > configuration files couldn't be merged and that I should hit the enter
> > button to merge them manually in vi.
> >
> > In vi, the first line was a series of left pointing arrows and a
> reference
> > to version 10.0.   That was followed by the content of the new
> > configuration file. (I think it was new because the lines I added to the
> > existing files weren't there.)
> >
> > The last line was a series of right pointing errors and a reference to
> > version 10.1.
> >
> > What am I supposed to do to keep the old configuration file contents?
> > There are no instructions.
>
> This is freebsd-update asking you to resolve conflicts in a three-way
> merge between the file as supplied with the old version of FreeBSD, the
> equivalent in the new version, and the file that is actually present on
> your system.  The >>>>>>>>, ========= and <<<<<<<< markers are a
> standard convention for indicating where there were areas of the file
> that were changed differently between old --> new and old --> what's on
> your system: what is generally called a 'merge conflict.'
>
> Edit the file so it has the contents you want.  The sections indicated
> by >>>>>>> etc markers are usually smaller than the whole file.  It's
> important to remove all the markers in those files, or various things
> may not start up correctly when you reboot.
>
>         Cheers,
>
>         Matthew
>
>
>
I am being asked to manually merge master.passwd and passwd.  Rather than
risk making a mistake on the passwords, can I copy the files from /etc/ to
/var/db/freebsd-update/merge/new/etc/?

Thanks,

Andrew