freebsd stable - Mar 2015 - There has to be a better way of merging /etc during a major freebsd-update

On Tue, 10 Mar 2015 10:17:18 -0500 Adam Vande More <amvandemore at
gmail.com>
wrote
> On Tue, Mar 10, 2015 at 7:05 AM, Peter Olsson <list-freebsd-stable at
jyborn.se
> > wrote:
> 
> > This flag to mergemaster saved a lot of work when I did
> > upgrades the old way, with cvsup and the make steps and
> > then mergemaster:
> >
> 
> https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base?view=revision&revision=221780
> 
> I'd venture to guess the script will work fine on older installs, but
> testing should be done first.
Isn't that pretty much what the -F flag, I mentioned does?
"-F    If the files differ only by VCS Id ($FreeBSD) install the
       new file."
In all honesty, I too got stuck answering "y" ~100 times, way
back when. And decided I needed to either find a better way,
or see if the mergemaster(8) had any secrets I wasn't
aware of. ;-)

--Chris
> 
> -- 
> Adam
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On Tue, Mar 10, 2015 at 2:01 PM, Chris H <bsd-lists at bsdforge.com>
wrote:
> > >
> >
> > https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base?view=revision&revision=221780
> >
> > I'd venture to guess the script will work fine on older installs,
but
> > testing should be done first.
> Isn't that pretty much what the -F flag, I mentioned does?
> "-F    If the files differ only by VCS Id ($FreeBSD) install the
>        new file."
>
Op asked for a freebsd-update solution which excludes any mergemaster
solution short of at least a partial rewrite.

-- 
Adam

On Tue, Mar 10, 2015 at 12:01:54PM -0700, Chris H wrote:
> On Tue, 10 Mar 2015 10:17:18 -0500 Adam Vande More <amvandemore at
gmail.com>
> wrote
> 
> > On Tue, Mar 10, 2015 at 7:05 AM, Peter Olsson <list-freebsd-stable
at jyborn.se
> > > wrote:
> > 
> > > This flag to mergemaster saved a lot of work when I did
> > > upgrades the old way, with cvsup and the make steps and
> > > then mergemaster:
> > >
> > 
> > https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base?view=revision&revision=221780
> > 
> > I'd venture to guess the script will work fine on older installs,
but
> > testing should be done first.
> Isn't that pretty much what the -F flag, I mentioned does?
> "-F    If the files differ only by VCS Id ($FreeBSD) install the
>        new file."
> In all honesty, I too got stuck answering "y" ~100 times, way
> back when. And decided I needed to either find a better way,
> or see if the mergemaster(8) had any secrets I wasn't
> aware of. ;-)
I think you are mixing up mergemaster with merge.
Freebsd-update uses merge, not mergemaster.
(But I will try running freebsd-update without merging /etc,
and use mergemaster -F instead. Should solve my problem.)

Peter Olsson

Quoth Peter Olsson <list-freebsd-stable at
jyborn.se>:
>
> (But I will try running freebsd-update without merging /etc,
> and use mergemaster -F instead. Should solve my problem.)
I'm fairly sure this won't do what you want, and in fact won't work
at
all, unless your /etc is identical to the stock /etc installed from the
ISO. (Which it isn't, of course.)

installworld specifically avoids installing the files in /etc; then,
when you run mergemaster, it installs the new versions of those files
into a temporary directory and merges them with the existing /etc. 

freebsd-update works a little differently: because it doesn't have a
source tree available, it has to fetch the stock versions of the files
in /etc for the release you're upgrading from, so that it can patch them
to the new release and then merge the changes into your current /etc. If
you tell freebsd-update to install /etc without merging it will blindly
update files you haven't changed (which is probably what you want) but
(I think) will fail to update the files that you have changed, because
it uses binary patches which won't apply to your modified versions.

If you want a rather hackish solution, you could try something like
this:

    - Rename /etc to /oldetc.
    - Find yourself a copy of the stock /etc for the version you are
      upgrading from. (tar -xpf base.txz --include /etc)
    - Run freebsd-update with /etc removed from the merge list. This
      will (should?) give you a stock /etc for the version you are
      upgrading to.
    - Rename /etc -> /tmp/etc, /oldetc -> /etc and run mergemaster with
      -t /tmp.

Obviously I would script this if I was doing more than one or two
machines.

Ben