# freebsd-update won't update .cf files cause they changed



## drhowarddrfine (May 9, 2016)

The files in /etc/mail freebsd.cf, sendmail.cf and submit.cf  have changed, probably cause at one time I edited their respectful .mc files but it's been a long time. `freebsd-update` says these files are affected by updates but won't change them cause they've been modified locally. 

I can make a copy but do I delete the original? will `freebsd-update` restore those files so I can redo my changes?

I don't know what I should do.


----------



## SirDice (May 11, 2016)

drhowarddrfine said:


> I can make a copy but do I delete the original? Will `freebsd-update` restore those files so I can redo my changes?


Yes, it should. I'd save the files somewhere safe, just in case. Then delete them and run the update.


----------



## drhowarddrfine (May 11, 2016)

It didn't replace the removed *.cf files so I had to put them back.


----------



## kpa (May 11, 2016)

For the future, you never need to edit those files for any reason other than merging conflicts that might occur on upgrades (and even on those you can just select install the new file). The correct way to use them is to let `make` create the host specific files ${HOSTNAME}.mc and ${HOSTNAME}.submit.mc and only edit those.


----------



## drhowarddrfine (May 11, 2016)

kpa I'm aware of that but these were set up three years ago when I first set up sendmail. So I may have edited the .mc files cause I didn't know what I was doing. Not that I do now but ... you know.


----------



## Daniel_R (Aug 16, 2016)

Clean versions of the .cf files can be found in the /var/db/etcupdate/current/etc/mail directory.  Copying these to /etc/mail makes freebsd-update(8) happy.

Unfortunately, calling `make install` in /etc/make overwrites these .cf files again.


----------



## drhowarddrfine (Aug 16, 2016)

I copied one of those over to /etc/mail/ but that didn't fix anything. I noticed the dates were the same but the file sizes were different. A `diff` shows a minor change I made to include zenspamhaus.


----------

