Holly Bostick wrote: >There is, of course, "an option to tell it to"; you just don't know >about it :-) . > >
You're kidding right. Something that I don't know about, yea right. LOL LOL Treat me like a sponge, I'm absorbing your knowledge, I hope anyway. I have been using Gentoo a while and have a little understanding of how it works but not much. I just know it is better than winders. >You might want to have a closer look at the Gentoo Documentation pages, >most specifically > >Gentoo Linux Documentation -- Environment Variables at >http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?part=2&chap=5 . > > That link didn't make sense. That the right chapter? May just be me. LOL >In any case, the deal is configuration files are protected by default. >That means that when you unmerge a program (or merge a new version of >the same program), the configuration files will not be automatically >overwritten (or deleted, for that matter). This saves you trouble, >because it doesn't screw up your config, if you later reinstall the >program, or when you update a program that had a complex configuration. >However, it also means that things such as what happened to you can >happen (config files that you want deleted don't get deleted automatically). > > It is no suprise that I didn't know about it, yet. I did a man emerge and didn't see it. Is it a newer version that I don't have yet? I run stable packages. >But the thing is, such files are important enough that they shouldn't be >just deleted like it's nothing. That's the Gentoo design and the Gentoo >way; an action like deleting /etc/devfsd can have sweeping consequences >if the system is not prepared to pick up the ball with udev-- forcing >you to delete it manually is both a way of making sure that you know you >did it, and also making sure you know what you're doing before you do it >(90% of the users ask the list before taking any action, which is fine-- >we *want* people to know what they're doing and have a healthy respect >for their own power to bork their system, so good you ask first!) > > I have been running udev for a while and it seems to be working fine. Time for devfs to go. >In any case, yes you can override the setting (of *course*, this is >Gentoo!) to delete certain (or all) protected files after an unmerge of >various programs; but now you have to look up how to do that, and that >means you have to read a bit about the consequences of your proposed >action before taking it (since you don't know how to take it before you >read a bit), and then you have a much better chance of not doing >something that's going to come back and bite you in the butt later, but >will instead make your system more effective for your usage pattern for >the future. >Holly > > I cheat. When I know I am about to delete some config files that I worry about, I back-up my /etc directory. I save it until I reboot a few times just to make sure. Smart huh? Thanks for the help. Dale -- To err is human, I'm most certainly human. -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
