etc-update config files

[pajamabama]

The general rules of thumb regarding dealing with config file updates, as far as I've seen, is to basically take the updated version unless you've made changes to the file personally. But since SL is highly configured prior to delivery, is there any master list of config files that have changes we should be keeping?

Also, what are the risks of not updating /etc/conf.d/clock? I don't have my clock set to UTC, I don't live in Timezone 'Factory', and I like setting the hardware clock at shutdown.

[pajamabama]

never mind about the clock file. After looking just a bit closer, I can see it's pretty clearly safe to keep the original.

[DontPanic]

It doesn't hurt to occasionally make a tar.gz backup of your configuration files so you can go back and examine the previous version in case you clobber a configuration file during updating.

For most configuration files, I'll give it a quick scan, and usually replace with the updated package.

If I feel like I need to give the update a closer look, I'll usually use a program called 'meld' (dev-util/meld), which gives me a much more visually intuitive side-by-side comparison of the update with the original. There are several other programs which can also do a much better job of comparing/merging than the one built into 'update-etc'.

[Necoro]

dispatch-conf can be used together with a versioning software - thus it will backup each version of your conf files

[DontPanic]

dispatch-conf can be used together with a versioning software - thus it will backup each version of your conf files

Thanks for that tip, I'll have to give that one a try.

[Raqua]

I use Kuroo and kdiff3 which gives me good GUI style editing, showing all that differs and it makes automatic backup copy of the changed file. Before I start editing I usually do a screenshot od Kuroo's list of changed cfg files, so I know which one I have changed. This way, when I got into troubles, I can easily figure out what I changed and I have backup copy.