[nycbug-talk] upgrading openbsd

[Bjorn Nelson]

On Apr 23, 2006, at 3:19 PM, Pete Wright wrote:

> On Sun, Apr 23, 2006 at 01:49:19PM -0400, michael wrote:
>> I frequently keep pretty up-to-date snapshots running on some of my
>> OpenBSD boxes.  Even though mergemaster is not in base, I use it to
>> update the etc files after an upgrade.  To make this process  
>> easier, I
>> tend to trim the new tree before merging.  Example.. on two of the
>> boxes I will *never* run a web server, so, I `rm -r new_etc/var/www`
>> before I even start.  Anyone who upgrades OpenBSD knows this saves  
>> gobs
>> of keystrokes.
>>
>> Merging is usually pretty easy because I don't edit system files;  
>> e.g.
>> rc.conf is a system file where rc.conf.local is mine, so mergemaster
>> doesn't touch it. But, to save time (and potential fat-finger), I'm
>> thinking of trimming the new tree even more before merging. Here is a
>> potential list of whacks. Is there any danger in this approach?

Not sure about OpenBSD, but on FreeBSD I once accidently checked in  
the entire /etc/ directory.  The machine was still usable enough for  
me to quickly check everything out again :P

> that's a pretty interesting idea, didn't think about that.  would it
> make sense to keep your local config data in something like RCS or CVS
> and write a Makefile that'll install your custom targets after an
> upgrade?

Or use the mergemaster hook to move all the non RCSes files to a  
backup directory so that mergemaster won't try to merge an old file  
there and instead install the new one -- *cough* OnLamp article

-Bjorn