12-30-2019
Practically speaking,
It depends on your risk management model.
If your system is prone to crashing or locking up, then it might be a better idea to copy the file to another server and do the edits, then load it up to the server and move it into place.
Sounds fishy, however, if your server is so unstable that it is prone to crashing or has such resource problems.
Normally, and I mean everyday on remote, production servers, I copy the file I want to edit and add a ".backup" or ".neo" extension on it, or something like that. But I generally edit the original file and save it to disk when I'm done.
When editing, you are editing a copy in memory, not the copy on disk; so if the system crashes while you are editing, you only lose the changes in the editor, not the file on disk.
I guess, one could say that when you cross the street, you should look right, then left, then up, and then down, and to be safe, look behind you too. However, most of us look right and left. If you want to edit copies and move them that's cool but it is not going to change much in your life compared to editing the original and saving it.
What is important, as mentioned by others and also by me again here, is to make a quick backup copy of a file before . you edit. I do this most of the time, even when I have offsite backups.
Making a copy, editing the copy, and moving it to replace the original file is still "not perfect" because you have still written over your original. You should at least make a copy, edit the original, and save it, knowing you have a fresh backup. If you copy the original, edit the copy, and move it to overwrite the original, where is your fresh backup? You don't have one (in this scenario). Ditto if you copy the file you just edited over the original, you then have two potentially "fat fingered" copies.
So, what's the point? What is the risk? What is the system vulnerability you are trying to mitigate?
Last edited by hicksd8; 12-30-2019 at 01:10 PM..
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LEARN ABOUT REDHAT
edit-pr
edit-pr(1) GNATS User Utilities edit-pr(1)
NAME
edit-pr - edit a problem report in the GNATS database
SYNOPSIS
edit-pr
[ -h | --help ] [ -V | --version ]
[ -d databasename | --database=databasename ]
[ -H host | --host=host ] [ -P port | --port=port ]
[ -v user | --user=user ] [ -w password | --passwd=password ]
PR
DESCRIPTION
edit-pr is used to make changes to existing PRs in a GNATS database.
edit-pr first examines the PR and locks it if it is not already locked. This is to prevent a PR from being edited by two users simultane-
ously. If the PR is already in the process of being edited, edit-pr displays the name of the person who owns the lock.
edit-pr then calls $EDITOR on PR. After the PR has been edited, it is resubmitted to the database, and the index is updated.
If you change a field that requires a reason for the change, edit-pr prompts you to supply a reason for the change. A message is then ap-
pended to the Audit-Trail field of PR with the changed values and the change reason.
Depending on how the database is configured, editing various fields in the PR may also cause mail to be sent concerning these changes. In
the default configuration, any fields that generate Audit-Trail entries will cause a copy of the new Audit-Trail message to be sent.
OPTIONS
-h, --help
Prints a brief usage message for edit-pr.
-V, --version
Prints the version number for edit-pr.
-d, --database
Specifies the database containing the PR to be edited; if no database is specified, the database named default is assumed. This
option overrides the database specified in the GNATSDB environment variable.
GNATS network options:
-H, --host
Hostname of the GNATS server.
-P, --port
The port that the GNATS server runs on.
-v, --username
Username used to log into the GNATS server.
-w, --passwd
Password used to log into the GNATS server.
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
The environment variable EDITOR specifies the editor to invoke on the PR. Default is vi(1).
The GNATSDB environment variable is used to determine which database to
use. For a local database, it contains the name of the database to access.
For network access via gnatsd, it contains a colon-separated list of strings that describe the remote database, in the form
server:port:databasename:username:password
Any of the fields may be omitted, but at least one colon must appear; otherwise, the value is assumed to be the name of a local database.
If GNATSDB is not set, it is assumed that the database is local and that its name is default.
FILES
/tmp/ep$$ Temporary file for PR being edited.
/tmp/ed_pr_ch$$
Holds Audit-Trail change message, if needed.
/tmp/u$$ Holds output of lock function.
SEE ALSO
Keeping Track: Managing Messages With GNATS (also installed as the GNU Info file gnats.info)
databases(5), dbconfig(5), delete-pr(8), edit-pr(1) file-pr(8), gen-index(8), gnats(7), gnatsd(8), mkcat(8), mkdb(8), pr-edit(8), query-
pr(1), queue-pr(8), send-pr(1).
COPYING
Copyright (c) 1993, 2003, Free Software Foundation, Inc.
Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are
preserved on all copies.
Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that the
entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a permission notice identical to this one.
Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this manual into another language, under the above conditions for modified
versions, except that this permission notice may be included in translations approved by the Free Software Foundation instead of in the
original English.
GNATS August 2003 edit-pr(1)