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Why are we blaming the 'victim' instead of enabling a solution? A comment in the Description area that runs along these lines would have made the entire questi
by pnathan 15y ago
Why are we blaming the 'victim' instead of enabling a solution?
A comment in the Description area that runs along these lines would have made the entire question a non-starter:
If /etc/motd is a non-symlinked file, regeneration will not occur.
- eridius 15y agoManpages for specific utilities really should not be reiterating basic unix knowledge (e.g. that piping data to a file via the shell > operator doesn't break symlinks).
- anigbrowl 15y agoHow else are new users supposed to find out? Man pages are often poorly written and unhelpful. Indeed, calling the utility 'man' instead of 'help' is unhelpful.
- alexchamberlain 15y agoYou have got to be kidding! Man pages are amazing - often you can figure out what is going on or what niche switch you want to use much quicker with a man page than Google.
- anigbrowl 15y agoThese assertions are not mutually exclusive.
- PotatoEngineer 15y agoI agree; I use Linux infrequently, and I've always found the man pages to be chock-full of details on how to use particular switches, but lacking in examples. I usually have to read them very closely just to get to the point of "look, I just want the basic usage on this tool so I can do X, the thing the tool is made for, rather than X -q -m -p."
- rg3 15y agoAlso, the original wording is not clear, IMHO. "On Debian GNU/Linux this file is a symbolic link pointing to /var/run. The contents of this file are regenerated upon every system boot based on the contents of /etc/motd.tail." It should probably read: "On Debian GNU/Linux this file is usually a symbolic link pointing to /var/run. The contents of the file in /var/run are regenerated upon every system boot based on the contents of /etc/motd.tail." To make it clear that the programs that generate the contents target the file in /var/run, and do not operate directly on /etc/motd.
- Someone 15y agoI sure hope you would not write it that way, with a double negative. "Regeneration will occur if /etc/motd is a symlink to /var/run/motd"? Still not nice, but IMO easier to understand.