[PLUG] Upgrade doesn't touch /home, eh?

[Rich Shepard]

On Sat, 23 Nov 2002, Anthony Schlemmer wrote:

> Do you have a .emacs~ backup file laying around from the last time you 
> edited your .emacs file in emacs? My .emacs and .bash_profile files 
> have followed me from job to job over the years and would hate to lose 
> them.

  Nope. One of the tasks of ~/.bash_logout is to get rid of backups. When I
want to save a file I copy it to a different name rather than leave it with
the tilde hanging off the end.
 
> One thing I do for my critcal text files is to put them into revision 
> control using RCS. I find this very handy as it makes it difficult for 
> me to completely lose a file as I can always go back to an older 
> working version if I find my newer version doesn't work for me. Theres 
> no way that a system upgrade will touch my RCS files so I won't lose 
> any critical files even if my system upgrade changes on of them.

  I read about this recently in Linux Journal but haven't implemented it
yet.
 
> I would have to give Red Hat two thumbs down for going through user 
> directories and changing or removing user configuration files without 
> saving the old file as a backup. Since no .rpmnew file was created it 
> makes me wonder if it was something other than "rpm" that did the 
> damage. There might have been some post install script or something 
> that did this. I suppose they could have had emacs do when you first 
> started it up as well I don't really know.

  No, the datestamp on the file is Sept. 5, when I did the upgrade and had
it upgrade emacs, too.

  Of course there's no way of recovering the file now, so I can find the
humor in the contact name given to me (and presumably correctly typed from
the business card provided) bounces from redhat.com as 'no such user'. I
guess that if you're going to screw up you might as well do it thoroughly
and not half-way. Sigh.

Thanks, Tony,

Rich