I wrote: > The main problem this time is that I'm not so lucky with the password files, > because for 8.4, freebsd-update has fetched new, stock .db files to put in > /etc.
Whoa, sorry, I misspoke here. freebsd-update asked me, after the merges, to approve unspecified differences in pwd.db and spwd.db. I assumed that it had fetched those files as part of the 8.4 distribution. But http://svnweb.freebsd.org/base/release/8.4.0/etc/ seems to indicate that's not what happened; only master.passwd was changed. I'm looking through the freebsd-update code now. I see it does actually do some special handling of master.passwd, but not until you do your 'freebsd-update install'. At that point, it will look at /etc/master.passwd and see if it's newer than /etc/pwd.db or /etc/spwd.db, and it will run pwd_mkdb. It doesn't use the -p flag, so I guess it doesn't care about passwd. This pwd_mkdb run didn't happen for me, though, since my 'freebsd-update install' run didn't actually put the new master.passwd file, or anything else, into /etc yet. I thought it would, but I don't understand it, really. So I don't see how it's supposed to work. To summarize: 1. I did the initial 'freebsd-update -r 8.4-RELEASE upgrade' 2. When prompted, I did all the merges it needed me to do by hand. 3. When prompted, I approved all the diffs. Two of the diffs were unspecified pwd.db & spwd.db changes, which caused me some alarm. 4. I looked in the staging area and found that these were empty files. 5. I looked in /etc and nothing new had been placed there yet. 6. I did the 'freebsd-update install' and checked /etc again; still nothing. 7. Afraid of rebooting with bogus password database files staged, I generated proper pwd.db, spwd.db, and passwd files myself, and put them in the staging area. Next step, I think, is reboot, before another 'freebsd-update install' run. I'm worried something is still amiss, though, so I'm holding off for now. :( _______________________________________________ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"