On Sat, Jan 09, 1999 at 02:19:35AM +0100, Torsten Landschoff wrote:
> 1. Identifier
> We should think about some kind of path as the identifier as
> Internet/Mail/Smarthost
> so we implement a program which can generate an appropriate database.
How about something more like:
mail-transport-agent/smarthost
and exim/realtime-blocking-list
?
> 3. Some way to generate a default value, perhaps a little sh script. Example:
> Networking/NIS/Defaultdomainname could have "hostname -f" as default
> value.
"current" value would seem more accurate than "default", here.
Possibly two (optional) scripts: one to get the current value, and one
to store it. Getting the current value would, as you say, do things like
hostname -f, while setting the current value would do things like echo
to /etc/mailname.
If neither was to be provided, a more complicated (general) configuration
database would then be used. Actually, it'd probably be used in any case.
> 4. Type of the information. E.g. String, Hostname/IP, Network, ...
> Everything should be represented as ASCII-Text in my opinion so we can
> stuff it in every database we want.
Defaulting unknown types to string would probably be useful (so a
networked program can specify "IPv6-address" as a type, and even though
the admintool doesn't know about IPv6 yet, it can still be given a string
without major complaint).
> > * Ability to store those options somewhere, for use on the same system, or
> > optionally on other systems as well.
> The postinst-script could just call dpkg-option to get the desired value. For
> example
> echo `dpkg-option Networking/NIS/Defaultdomainname` >/etc/defaultdomain
Doing this will make it impossible to do a partial upgrade to unstable
packages, without getting a new dpkg (or whatever dpkg-option is in). And
if the packages don't all Pre-Depend on dpkg >> 5.6.7.8, this won't
ensure the correctness of apt upgrades, even. I think this is something
to avoid.
Cheers,
aj, who thinks he might try doing a linux-kernel style configuration
thing just to see how it works.
--
Anthony Towns <aj@humbug.org.au> <http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/>
I don't speak for anyone save myself. PGP encrypted mail preferred.
``Like the ski resort of girls looking for husbands and husbands looking
for girls, the situation is not as symmetrical as it might seem.''
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