Re: mergemaster feature suggestion...

Evren Yurtesen said:
> I am sorry. I didnt want to cause this kind of discussion to begin.
>

Don't apologize, it's not your fault it's mine.

> But also, does binary upgrade remove older files from /etc? I tried
> that
> only 1 time and it didnt even install half of the files required in
> /etc
> directory :) for example sshd conf files etc. were missing. Then I
> decided that I will not do that unless I absolutely need to.
>
> I use build/install-world because I dont want to spend so much
> bandwidth
> and I prefer to get latest patches etc. easily. I want to have the
> possibility to go back to a date later on if I have a problem with
> the
> latest sources. So cvsup does that for me easily.
>

I usually do upgrades with the build/install method as well for the
same reasons.  In general I find the method easier than the binary
upgrade method.  To be honest I'm not sure if the binary method does
remove old files but if IIRC the way it works is it saves off a copy
of /etc and rebuilds a new one so it should.

> About those old files, I think any old file which doesnt exist in
> newer
> release does not only waste space and cause confusion. Also it might
> cause security problems. Considering, a problem in a file/binary
> whatever which does not exist in newer versions wouldnt be fixed by
> the
> freebsd developers. However it is a small possibility.
>
> I often thought of a way to remove older files. I even considered
> making
> a fresh install of the latest version of FreeBSD to a test machine
> and
> compare the file structures to remove files from the actual
> machines.
> But there can be an utility to do that right? If there is an utility
> to
> compare the files and install (mergemaster) there can be an utility
> to
> remove the older files also, or this can be implemented inside
> mergemaster as an option/
>

While I suppose it's possible for old files to negatively impact
system security I would think it would be unlikely as they'd
generally be unreferenced by the new system binaries though
/etc/rc.d might be one notable exception.

Assuming a binary upgrade builds a new /etc and/or clobbers files in
/etc an easy way to determine old ones would be the date-stamps.  If
that's the case using `ls' whith appropriate options would help you
determine which files where new and which were old.

Adam