Re: Install kernel and userland without source?

[Greg Troxel <gdt%lexort.com@localhost>]

"J. Lewis Muir" <jlmuir%imca-cat.org@localhost> writes:

>> I have used etcmanage in the past, and indeed it does do everything I
>> want!  However, I went looking for the website for it and couldn't find
>> it.  The Makefile HOMEPAGE variable is set to
>> 
>>   http://www.ir.bbn.com/~gdt/etcmanage/
>> 
>> but it's commented out, and the hostname doesn't resolve in DNS at the
>> moment.  So, it's a little difficult to find out more about it and look
>> at the source code at the moment.  (I assume the distribution file is on
>> the pkgsrc servers, though.)
>
> Yes, I found the distribution file at
>
>   https://cdn.netbsd.org/pub/pkgsrc/distfiles/etcmanage-0.9.4.tar.gz

Sorry, the previous distfile location is not longer functional.  I
should set up a new one.

> However, the README contains this rather scary notice stating that
> etcmanage is alpha code:
>
>   WARNING - ETCMANAGE MAY RENDER YOUR SYSTEM UNUSABLE
>
>   Before starting, back up all of etc (e.g., tar up and leave tarball on
>   /), and ensure that you can boot from another root (e.g. floppy, cd,
>   etc.).  etcmanage is alpha code and comes with no sanity checks; it is
>   possible to remove most of /etc.
>
>   At this time, etcmanage should be used only by those who have backups
>   and are very familiar with system administration and recovery from
>   trashed root filesystems.
>
> Is that still true?

Well, not really.   But basically any program that purports to
automatically merge new changes into /etc has the possibility of
trouble.  As does a human trying to do it by hand.

I have not experienced any problems in a really long time.  It might
have happened in really early development in 2005 or something like that.
So the warning is now overblown.

But, you should have backup of /etc anyway, because you should have
backups of everything.  And, it's good if you are updating to know what
you are doing enough to boot from an alternate kernel and fix things.

That said, I have machines that I don't really care about, used to have
a particular netbsd-N/arch combo to test netbsd and packages.  On those,
I use etcmanage (called from INSTALL-NetBSD, based on bits built with
BUILD-NetBSD, without me paying attention), and I have not had trouble.)

I should probably tone down the warning and make another release.