freebsd-update questions

[Andrew Gould]

On Wed, Jan 28, 2015 at 2:07 AM, Matthew Seaman <
m.seaman at infracaninophile.co.uk> wrote:

> On 28/01/2015 07:44, Andrew Gould wrote:
> > 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/?
>
> What you are editing is a copy of the master.passwd file held in
> freebsd-update's work area, which it will only move into place once you
> run 'freebsd-update install' So fluffing the merge edit is not going to
> immediately screw up your system.  It should be possible to overwrite
> the copy of master.passwd in freebsd-update's prep area -- no idea if
> that works, but I can't see any reason why not.  However it's not a
> usual thing to do, and you'ld be better advised to not screw up the
> merge edits.
>
> One thing that may help you: by default freebsd-update uses vi as the
> default editor for these merge conflict resolutions.  You can substitute
> whatever editor you prefer simply by setting the EDITOR environment
> variable before you start.  Many editors will recognise you're dealing
> with a merge conflict and put you into a special mode to make that easier.
>
> I don't know why it's asking you about /etc/passwd as that's a file
> derived directly from master.passwd -- don't worry too much about it,
> and just run 'pwd_mkdb -p' before you reboot.
>
>         Cheers,
>
>         Matthew
>
> --
> Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil.
>
> PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey
> JID: matthew at infracaninophile.co.uk
>
> Thank you for your help.

Andrew