Re: Scary bugs
On Sun, Jan 30, 2000 at 12:07:09PM -0200, Henrique M Holschuh wrote:
>
> I've just noticed an *EVIL* piece of misinformation (for Debian) in man
> hwclock, which implies that the user should use hwclock to set the RTC
> without mangling the system clock and reboot to update the system clock.
> THIS might be one of the causes of all this mess, since we currently have
> --systohc enabled. Added to the list of small doc updates.
>
I think that this is a *bad* idea to modify a man page because of some
specificities of the installation (as you point out, the man page can be
dangerous because we have --systohc).
If the doc is put in front of the user (one or two `echo' lines in
`hwclock.sh', the READMEs) the clueless user has no reason to go reading
the man page if he doesn't know what he is trying to do.
So, here is my humble opinion :
>
> Okay, which one? #1, #2 or #3?
>
Okay for #3 (actual case) but WITH the basic explanations you wrote, and,
in addition, as a kind of morality : "a unix system doesn't allow the
direct access to the devices, so, if you have no idea about what's going
on, access the clock via the system --- ie via `date'".
But please *don't touch* the man page. The explanations you will write
have to avoid the need for the clueless user to go and manipulate the
CMOS clock. The problems here are not the option taken, but the
corrections that a user can try to make without knowing the gazworks.
And we will take the time to go further for woody.
Cheers,
> --
> "One disk to rule them all, One disk to find them. One disk to bring
> them all and in the darkness grind them. In the Land of Redmond
> where the shadows lie." -- The Silicon Valley Tarot
> Henrique Holschuh
--
Thierry LARONDE
thierry.laronde@polynum.com
website : http://www.polynum.com
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