smartmontools and update-smart-drivedb

Christoph Moench-Tegeder cmt at burggraben.net
Wed Apr 29 18:17:59 UTC 2020


## Carmel NY (carmel_ny at outlook.com):

> 1) Why is the "update" procedure deliberately removed from the port?

The svn history does mention it:
https://svnweb.freebsd.org/ports?view=revision&revision=527607
"Remove drivedb update binary as it will modify tracked files"
A port has no business modifying itself once installed - if
installed files have to be updated at runtime, these files should
live in /var/db/.
An acceptable solution in this case would be moving that drive db
to /var/db/smartmontools/ (or similar). When I start thinking about
that... perhaps the original (shipped) drive db should be kept as a
fallback, in case the user did not download (or delete) the updateable
drive db: I haven't seen any complaints about missing drive db updates
until now, which makes me suspect that for most people (me included)
the shipped drive db is "good enough" and few people ever tried to
update the drive db at all.

Regards,
Christoph

-- 
Spare Space


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