> OK, now that the problem has been solved, I'd like to ask a question > about why this was a problem in the first place. Not getting on you, > Dave, I'm just curious about a "user psychology issue".
I think what you are seeing is that people will see and respond to different errors differently. As was mentioned by most people, it wasn't necessarily clear what file the hidden "B" might be located in. It's the way each person's individual intuition works. Allow me another example: > 2) I would have noticed something like depcache showing up in etc-update > for that reason (it would be so unusual), although I would not have edited > it had it come up, but accepted changes. When I first read this, my intuition immediately said "why in the world would depcache ever show up here?" Why did I think that? Well, mainly because the directory it is in is not CONFIG_PROTECTed by default. If for some reason you had that directory in /var set to CONFIG_PROTECT, you'd surely know about it. Still, it obviously seemed like it *could* happen to you; thus, you used it in your example. I think you are being a little unfair in your judgement. Thinking to look in /etc/init.d, etc. relies on at least some knowledge that not every Gentoo user will have (esp. the newer variety). The same is true in the case above. Either you didn't know or didn't immediately think of the consequences of the CONFIG_PROTECT settings. I'd tend to lend your arguments more merit if the error in question said something to the effect of: /etc/init.d/hdparm: line 6: B: command not found Then a quick "head /etc/init.d/hdparm" would reveal the answer in a much less obfuscated manner. As it stands, I think you are wanting to require the user happen to know some semi-trivial Gentoo knowledge that they won't necessarily. Nick -- [email protected] mailing list
