vi was Re: [NCLUG] linuxconf gone?

Michael Dwyer mdwyer at sixthdimension.com
Thu Mar 21 11:07:52 MST 2002


Evelyn Mitchell wrote:
> 
> * On 2002-03-20 19:12 Aaron D. Johnson <adj at ccltd.com> wrote:
> > In message <15512.56239.73011.308868 at harrier.ftc.agilent.com>, Daniel Herrington writes
> > > I'm trying to debug some network stuff, and the only utility I can
> > > find on my RedHat 7.2 box for network configuration is
> > > /usr/sbin/netconfig, which doesn't have very many options available.
> > > I don't seem to have netconf or linuxconf or control-panel.  Is
> > > there a better tool for setting DNS servers, gateways, etc. now?
> >
> > vi.
> 
> That's what I use.

That's what I use, too.  The problem is that it is sometimes dangerous
to use.  The one in particular that I can think of is the miserable
'printtool', which will throw up and trash your printcap if you EVER
edit it by hand...

In the given case, you can edit your /etc/resolv.conf file by hand to
set your DNS server, but it might get overwritten at the next boot by
the configs in /etc/sysconfig...  Ugh.

On the other end of the spectrum, samba's SWAT tool works very well with
humans hacking the file by hand.

Anyway, the moral is that using vi should always work, but if you aren't
careful, you might break something obscure.  This seems to be more and
more the case with modern distributions...



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