HEADS-UP: installworld on r299292 through r299317 will replace master.passwd, passwd, and group files

[Garance A Drosehn]

On 10 May 2016, at 2:24, Glen Barber wrote:

> On Tue, May 10, 2016 at 08:18:44AM +0200, O. Hartmann wrote:
>>
>> It is not only master.passwd, it is also group and several other
>> config files, I suspect it is the whole bunch of files located
>> in /etc/ getting reset to their initial file values.
>>
>> My OpenLDAP environment isn't working anymore due to /etc/pam.d
>> reset. X11 doesn't start anymore due to reset of /etc/ttys. also,
>> sysctl.conf has been reset.
>
> The change (incorrectly) invoked the 'distribution' target, so
> anything that gets "touched" by that will likely be affected.
>
> You are correct that we should have an additional failsafe for
> this kind of thing, not just a subset of files arbitrarily placed
> in /var/backups via a periodic(8) script.

Hmm.  When working on some non-BSD open-source system, I found it
prudent to backup /etc.  And I'm lazy, so I went with a simple
tactic of:

   MLET=$(awk -v "MDIG=$(date +%m)" \
                 'BEGIN { print substr("ABCDEFGHJKLMxyz", MDIG, 1); }')
   ETCTARNAME="/tmp/$(hostname -s)-etc-$(date +%Y${MLET}%d).tbz2"
   ETCLNKNAME="etc-$(hostname -s)-$(date +%Y${MLET}%d)"
   cd /
   ln -s etc "$ETCLNKNAME"
   nice tar cjf "$ETCTARNAME" "$ETCLNKNAME"/*
   scp -p  "$ETCTARNAME" $ETCSAV_DEST:Downloads/SAV-etcs
   rm -f   "$ETCTARNAME" "$ETCLNKNAME"

The idea is to create a symlink of etc which includes a timestamp
(eg: "etc-freefall-2016E10"), and create a compressed tar archive
which saves all the files as being under that directory-name instead
of /etc.  I then copy that to a different host, and remove the
archive file.  Maybe I should add something like that to my own
installworld script.  Probably should adjust it somewhat to pay
better attention to potential security issues.  (you wouldn't want
to copy that archive file to a public FTP server, for instance!)

Then when something goes haywire, I would create a new archive
and then compare the two complete sets of /etc files to see what
has changed.

-- 
Garance Alistair Drosehn                =     drosih at rpi.edu
Senior Systems Programmer               or   gad at FreeBSD.org
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute;             Troy, NY;  USA