Re: ntpd as ntpd user question

On Mon, Jul 23, 2018 at 09:28:41PM -0700, Kevin Oberman wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 23, 2018 at 7:25 PM, Ian Lepore <ian_at_freebsd.org> wrote:
> 
> > On Mon, 2018-07-23 at 18:54 -0700, bob prohaska wrote:
> > > On Mon, Jul 23, 2018 at 09:34:26PM +0200, Herbert J. Skuhra wrote:
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > Yes, first you press m. Then you will see differences of installed
> > > > file (left) and new file (right). Then you press either l or
> > > > r:
> > > >
> > > > l | 1:      choose left diff
> > > > r | 2:      choose right diff
> > > >
> > > > If the diff tries to remove/add to many lines you can:
> > > >
> > > > el: edit left diff
> > > > er: edit right diff
> > > >
> > > > And if done you can view the merged file (v) before installing (i)
> > > > it.
> > > >
> > > > I am sure, someone can explain it better! :)
> > > >
> > > Perhaps, but you've made the essential point. Your reply let me
> > > understand that
> > > mergemaster does not really "master" the merge, it rather identifies
> > > files needing
> > > to be merged and then starts sdiff to let me modify files. Never
> > > having even looked
> > > at sdiff, the learning curve proved very steep. Too steep, in fact.
> > >
> > > I'm going to try a more incremental approach.
> > >
> > > Thank you _very_ much!
> > >
> > > bob prohaska
> >
> > Your reaction to mergemaster is about the same as mine was when I first
> > encountered it very long ago, and re-discovered when I tried it a
> > couple years ago. It just seems like more trouble than it's worth, I
> > can usually figure out what's broken and fix it by hand faster than
> > messing with all the merge stuff.
> >
> > But, someone told me that if you give mergemaster the right flags it
> > can potentially be intervention-free. Those apparently aren't the flag
> > or two that're suggested at the bottom of UPDATING. So I didn't really
> > dig into that any deeper, but I toss it out there in case someone can
> > expand on it.
> >
> > It certainly makes some sense that it could be done intervention-free.
> > When doing other diff-based merges (like 'svn update') you only have to
> > intervene when there's an actual conflict between some local change
> > you've made and the incoming changes.
> >
> >
> It gets a LOT simpler if you use "mergemaster -iPUF" Only those files you
> have modified will show up. In most cases, it just zips right by. In most
> that it does not, the use of 'r' or 'l' in merge is all you need and always
> 'r' eccepton lines you have modified, yourself, so you should know about
> them.
> 
I realize your comments are directed to Ian and not me, so please take these
$.02 for no more than they're worth. 

My problems with mergemaster are _not_ with mergemaster. They're with sdiff.
The window presented, along with the prompts, are simply bewildering. I suspect
that someboey truly fluent with vi would recognize what's going on at once and
have no trouble. I've used vi for a long time, but only in the most naive way,
and sdiff's man page is little help for a newcomer. Even a Web search for tutorials
found nothing very useful, at least not quickly. 

A plain language discription of what sdif does and how might make the minutia of the
man page comprehensible to non-experts. 

Apologies if I'm belaboring the obvious, and thanks for reading!

bob prohaska