Confusion about updating config files

drayco2000 · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 12 Mar 2003 Posts: 126

If I do an emerge -u system or an emerge -u world and I get a notice at the end that I have config files to update, what do I do?? Run etc-update? Should I replace old config files with the new ones? Or if I am happy with my config files, should I just ignore updating config files. Are some files a must update and others not?? I had a problem recently where I did an etc-update because I was notified I had 1 config file to update and it was /etc/make.conf
But I must have done it wrong because after I checked my /etc/make.conf file it was completely different, it was a standard default /etc/make.conf file with none of my settings. Please help

drayco2000 · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 12 Mar 2003 Posts: 126

I am also confused about /etc/make.conf file in general. The install docs instruct you on how to set USE CFLAGS and CXXFLAGS, what about all the other lines below that deal with portage and autoclean and whatnot, they are all commented out, am I supposed to go through each one and modify it? Or are there some kind of defaults that are used if I do nothing. Portage seems to be working perfectly. The only think I have commented out is Autoclean yes, any thoughts?

David_Escott · l33t Joined: 12 Jan 2003 Posts: 952 Location: Boston, MA

You should make changes as you desire. So when you run etc-update it should present a list of files that have changed. When you select one of them you will see the differences between them (+ indicates something added, - something removed). Make changes as needed and put in what file you want to keep. Somethings you should always update (unless you modified them yourself) these include the boot scripts in /etc/rc.d.

As to the options in the make.conf uncomment them if you want to use them.