ntpd as ntpd user question

[bob prohaska]

On Sun, Jul 22, 2018 at 01:49:41AM +0200, Herbert J. Skuhra wrote:
> On Sat, Jul 21, 2018 at 03:09:26PM -0700, bob prohaska wrote:

> > The failure is a little surprising, is ntpd a reserved name?
> 
> Why? You obviously entered the string "ntpd" instead of an integer when
> asked for the uid!?
> 

Sigh...you're right. Must have been sleepier than I thought.

> > The machine is re-running buildworld/installworld from a clean start,
> > so presumably it'll halt over the same error again. When that happens, 
> > what's the simplest way to recover? Mergemaster is a big hammer, something
> > less comprehensive might suffice, even manual editing of files.
> 
> In this case 'mergemaster -p' is enough.
> 

An example or two on the use of mergemaster might be a considerable help. There's something
very basic that I don't understand.

What is the correct response to the prompts for this simple case? The output displayed
is said to be differences, so the "temporary" file's nature isn't self-evident. It looks
as if the most obvious option is m, followed by eb, but that leaves me editing by hand, 
which is what I thought mergemaster was supposed to avoid. 


Thanks for reading, and apologies for being dense.

bob prohaska