eric@egsner.cirr.com (Eric Schnoebelen) (07/08/90)
In article <1990Jul07.125218.24439@virtech.uucp> cpcahil@virtech.UUCP (Conor P. Cahill) writes: - In article <6417@gaboon.UUCP> asv@gaboon.UUCP (Stan Voket) writes: - > Has anyone done the upgrade rather than the destructive reinstall on a - > big ESDI disk? Any problems with mail and news not working? - - I did the upgrade on a 680MB ESDI drive and had just a couple of problems ( - like some of my crontab entries got blown away, my gettydefs file got blown - away,etc). I don't see why those files have to be destroyed by the upgrade. I have just spent the last several weeks working on Convex's next OS release install tapes, and our install scripts go to great lengths to not destroy any configuration files, such as gettytab, ttys, passwd, rc.* and others (ConvexOS is a BSD system, after all). These contortions on the part of our install script leaves the upgraded machine with the same configuration as it originally had, and suggests the user merge in the new functionality from the new default control files. It is not that hard to determine what files shouldn't be overwritten, and have the install scripts save them off to the side, and then replace them to their original home when the install is done. The new (improved?) configuration files could be saved off to the side, and the user told to use them as a prototype for upgrading the existing configuration files. And I know that ISC's install diskette format makes such a script much easier than the monolithic thing I have been maintaining/updating. How about it ISC? Will we be seeing such a feature in the Install routines of future releases? [ ps. of the last several weeks, only a few hours were spent actually writing/updating said install script. Thus it is not that hard..] -- Eric Schnoebelen eric@cirr.com schnoebe@convex.com Real Programmers don't write specs. Users should be grateful for whatever they get. They are lucky to get any program at all.