ETCUPDATE(8)            NetBSD System Manager's Manual            ETCUPDATE(8)

NAME
     etcupdate - update the configuration and startup files in /etc

SYNOPSIS
     etcupdate [-b srcdir] [-h] [-p pager] [-s srcdir] [-t temproot] [-v] [-w
     width]

DESCRIPTION
     etcupdate is a tool to update the configuration and startup files in /etc
     (and some other directories like /dev, /root and /var) without the need
     of manually checking and modifying every file.  The user should run this
     script after performing an operating system update (e.g. after running
     make build in /usr/src or after extracting the binary distribution files)
     to use the latest configuration and startup files.

     If the user is updating from sources (which is the default mode), etcup-
     date will first create a copy of the new configuration and startup files
     by running make distribution in /usr/src/etc.

     Instead of using sources, the user can also extract one or more binary
     distribution sets and use those files to update the currently installed
     files (see usage of the -b srcdir argument later in this manual page).
     Files in srcdir will be removed by etcupdate when using the -b srcdir ar-
     gument (as the srcdir directory is treated like temproot).

     etcupdate compares the new files against the currently installed files.
     The user is given the option of installing, merging or deleting each mod-
     ified or missing file.  etcupdate also detects if the user installs cer-
     tain special files and performs corresponding tasks like remaking device
     nodes or rebuilding a database from the aliases(5) file.

ENVIRONMENT
     TEMPROOT  The temporary files created from /usr/src/etc will be stored
               here.  These files will then be compared against the currently
               installed files in the /etc directory.  By default this is
               /tmp/temproot but it can be changed either with the -t temproot
               argument or by defining the TEMPROOT variable.

     SRCDIR    The location of the NetBSD sources files.  By default this is
               /usr/src/etc but it can be changed either with the -s srcdir
               argument or by defining the SRCDIR variable.

     PAGER     The pager to use when displaying files.  By default this is
               more(1) but it can be changed either with the -p pager argument
               or by defining the PAGER variable.

     WIDTH     The screen width used during interactive merge. By default this
               is 80 but it can be changed either with the -w width argument
               or by defining the WIDTH variable.  This is useful for xterm(1)
               users with wider shell windows.

FILES
     The environment variables can also be defined in the following configura-
     tion files.  The user's personal configuration file settings override the
     global settings.

     /etc/etcupdate.conf

     ~/.etcupdaterc

EXAMPLES
     You have just upgraded your NetBSD host from 1.6 to 1.6.1 and now it's
     time to update the configuration files as well.  To update the configura-
     tion files from the sources (if you have the /usr/src/etc directory):

           etcupdate

     The default location of the source files is /usr/src/etc but this may be
     overridden with the -s srcdir command line argument:

           etcupdate -s /some/where/src/etc

     To update the configuration files from binary distribution sets do some-
     thing like this:

           mkdir /tmp/temproot
           cd /tmp/temproot
           tar xpzf /some/where/etc.tgz
           etcupdate -b /tmp/temproot

     To get a better idea what's going on, use the -v flag:

           etcupdate -v

HISTORY
     The etcupdate command appeared in NetBSD 1.6.

AUTHORS
     The script was written by Martti Kuparinen <martti@netbsd.org> and im-
     proved by several other NetBSD users.

     The idea for this script (including code fragments, variable names etc.)
     came from the FreeBSD mergemaster (by Douglas Barton).  Unlike the FreeB-
     SD mergemaster, this does not use CVS version tags to compare if the
     files need to be updated. Files are compared with cmp(1) as this is more
     reliable and the only way if the version numbers are the same even though
     the files are different.

NetBSD 1.6                      March 22, 2002                               2