[Linux-disciples] Recognizing a new NIC

[Adam Rosi-Kessel]

Jason A. Smith wrote:
> Alright, so i finally got a chance to do this and all worked
> wonderfully. Thanks for the tips. Query: before I made the change I
> copied my old "interfaces" file to "interfaces.old" just in case I
> screwed up. Is there an particular advantage/disadvantage to leaving old
> files like this lying around?

Sure, it's a good practice, especially when you don't really know what 
you're doing. A couple of tips:

- I would recommend renaming it to something like interfaces.2005.01.26. 
Over time, you can get a number of ".old" files and it's much easier if you 
name them with as an identifiable date.  You could also do something like 
"v2" "v3" (for version 2, etc.).

- A little timesaving command line tip--you can rename interfaces to 
interfaces.old just by typing

mv interfaces{,.old}

- You can also use RCS (revision control system) to keep track of every 
change to a file.  We do this with all /etc files on bostoncoop now, so 
there is a complete change history going back to the first version.  RCS is 
a little arcane, but basically you would do

ci -u filename

to create a 'history file'.  When you want to edit it, do

co -l filename

which 'locks' the file so only you can change it, and makes it writable 
(otherwise it is read-only).  When you're done with changes do

ci -u filename

which "checks it in" and makes it read-only again.  If you want to see the 
history of changes you would do

rlog filename

and do see the differences between the current version and a past version

rcsdiff -r1.2 filename

(where '1.2' is the version you are checking against).

man rcs for more details.
-- 
Adam Rosi-Kessel
http://adam.rosi-kessel.org
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