misc/87921: mergemaster needs to be smarter about config files

[Simson L. Garfinkel]

>Number:         87921
>Category:       misc
>Synopsis:       mergemaster needs to be smarter about config files
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       non-critical
>Priority:       medium
>Responsible:    freebsd-bugs
>State:          open
>Quarter:        
>Keywords:       
>Date-Required:
>Class:          sw-bug
>Submitter-Id:   current-users
>Arrival-Date:   Mon Oct 24 13:30:16 GMT 2005
>Closed-Date:
>Last-Modified:
>Originator:     Simson L. Garfinkel
>Release:        6.0-RC1
>Organization:
Harvard University
>Environment:
FreeBSD h.ex.com 6.0-RC1 FreeBSD 6.0-RC1 #0: Thu Oct 20 09:53:07 EDT 2005     simsong at h.ex.com:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC  i386
        
>Description:
Upgrading a FreeBSD machine takes longer than it should because of the large number of mindless mergmaster questions that are asked.

In many cases, the questions that are asked do not need to be asked, because the file from the prevous release has not been modified in any way.

For example, last night I upgraded a machine from 5.4 to 6.0-RC1 and was asked if I would like to merge in my changes to the file  /etc/defaults/pccard.conf.

However, I had not made any changes to this file. The file had changed between releases, but the version that I had installed was unchanged from my original distribution.


>How-To-Repeat:
              Upgrade a machine from 5.4 to 6.0-RC1.
>Fix:
              An easy solution to this problem would be for mergemaster to consult the mtree system and simply upgrade any file whose contents had not been modified. If you feel the need to special case certain files, such as /etc/passwd, you could do that. But files like  /etc/defaults/pccard.conf should be silently upgraded if they are not modified between upgrades. 

>Release-Note:
>Audit-Trail:
>Unformatted: