Old /etc files back, or cvs error?

[Warren Block]

On Tue, 24 Feb 2009, Doug Barton wrote:

> Warren Block wrote:
>
>> mergemaster adds a *lot* of old files in /etc that were not there in
>> 7.1-RELEASE.  (Remember the rc.d rework?  Like that.)  For example, a
>> bunch of bluetooth files and /etc/isdn/*.
>
> That is definitely not the outcome you should have ended up with.

I should have been more careful in watching what was going on.  It 
wasn't adding files, just "updating" files that only differed in version 
strings.  A test system showed that as of now, there's somewhere around 
325 files in /etc like that.  That's not counting files which will 
probably be different like /etc/master.passwd and /etc/group, or the 
sendmail files which are customized with "built by" messages.

(The differing file version strings are due to the svn to cvs export, as 
explained by Erik Trulsson.)

> If that doesn't work, please script your mergemaster session and send
> us the output.

I did save both a full session and a cleaned list of files from a test 
system built with 7.1-RELEASE and updated to 7-STABLE:

http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/freebsd-7-stable/

Only after manually creating that list of files did it occur to me that 
there ought to be a way to skip files that differ only in version 
strings, and that mergemaster should have that.  And *then* I finally 
checked the man page for mergemaster, where the mysterious -U option is 
described.

mergemaster -U works fine.  Had I only been lazy enough to look it up 
beforehand...

The mergemaster man page doesn't tell how mergemaster detects "files 
that have not been user modified", so I'm not sure how safe -U really 
is.  If it's safe for everyday users, then the second mergemaster 
step in the standard updating procedure in the Handbook should include 
the -U.

The svn/cvs/version string thing sure looks like a bug, but no doubt 
fixing it is easier said than done.

-Warren Block * Rapid City, South Dakota USA