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Top Forums UNIX for Advanced & Expert Users Why is editing a file by renaming the new one safer? Post 303042601 by vbe on Wednesday 1st of January 2020 04:00:35 AM
Old 01-01-2020
I agree also,

I did lose files after crashes but in the early 90s on HP-UX 8, or Linux 0.99... can't remember after with JFS...

As Neo mentions, its not the OS crash the vulnerability but more the Human intervention on those files been modified e.g I saw Sun servers after a reboot where no one could connect, because someone modified the passwd file NOT using vi... and many more similar cases, so for peace of mind I always make a copy I modify and once done add .ori to the original so whatever I can compare... My remarks apply mostly to any Unix configuration files except sudoers need editing with vi ( as depending on the state of the machine is the only editor working...)

It is true that modern editors as Neo described have funky functionalities that are more than simple cosmetics and would be a pity not to use, but also as he adds: with caution..

What I wanted to mention was more: In a panic mode you tend to forget a lot of things like when a system crashes, you may well have a mail ( but who looks at his mbox?) from the system saying you were editing a file and the system saved the state of the file under the name XXXXXXX, you open them with vi -rdepending the content and how bad the crash you may find the system managed to leave the original in his precedent state ( so before editing or last save ) and have in XXXXXX the last state of current modifications of the file, it may not be complete but at least you haven't lost all, and most important it avoided your system some unwanted file corruption... this may be the reason of with JFS no one can remember losing anything these last 25 years...

But it's not a reason for not being careful when doing sysadmin tasks
 

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MAILCAP.ORDER(5)                                               Order Mailcap Entries                                              MAILCAP.ORDER(5)

NAME
/etc/mailcap.order - the mailcap ordering specifications DESCRIPTION
The order of entries in the /etc/mailcap file can be altered by editing the /etc/mailcap.order file. Each line of that file specifies a package and an optional mime type. Mailcap entries that match will be placed in the order of this file. Entries that don't match will be placed later. Example mime-support:*/* gv:application/postscript netscape:text/html less:text/* emacs:text/* The above would make any entries provided by the mime-support package (as found in the /usr/lib/mime/packages directory) take priority over everything else. The gv package will be used over anything else when it comes to postscript documents. Netscape will be used for any html documents and less will be used for any remaining text documents. However, since neither netscape or less provide for editing documents, any edit or compose actions will fall through to the emacs rules. After modifying this file, be sure to run /usr/sbin/update-mime (as root) to propagate the changes into the /etc/mailcap file. Remember that this files takes package names and not executable names. If you want to define rules that reference specific programs, the best way is to include them in ~/.mailcap or the user section of the /etc/mailcap file. LIMITATIONS
There is currently no way to break out a certain type from a wildcard rule. If, for example, both xv and gimp were to specify "image/*" rules, it isn't possible to use xv for gif images but use gimp for jpeg images. Also, I would like to add the ability to specify certain actions in the rules. For example, if netscape were to have an edit rule but I wanted to use emacs for editing/creating html documents, I could place a line like emacs:text/* action=edit|compose before the netscape entry. The update-mime program would then spit out entries such that netscape view rule comes before the emacs view rule but have the netscape edit rule comes after the emacs edit rule. SEE ALSO
mailcap(5) run-mailcap(1) update-mime(8) AUTHOR
The mailcap.order specification was written by Brian White <bcwhite@pobox.com> Debian Project 16th Aug 1998 MAILCAP.ORDER(5)
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