Bug#509117: Can I overwrite a file in /etc?

[Anton Zinoviev <anton@lml.bas.bg>]

On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 04:44:28PM +0100, Frédéric Boiteux wrote:
> 
> Using bootchart to profile the boot time of my laptop (Thinkpad X31), I've 
> noticed that it takes a long time in keyboard-setup and console-setup init 
> scripts.
>
> I've searched and found that setupcon, tool called by these 2 init scripts, is
> always rebuilding keyboard definition from Xorg files at each boot time !
> 
> I've used the '--save' command of setupcon to save it to disk (in 
> /etc/console-setup/boottime.kmap.gz and now, these boot scripts run very quickly, 
> and bootchart tells me I gained 9 seconds :-)
> 
> Perhaps a mechanism could be added to save config or suggest it ?

Setupcon uses /etc/console-setup/boottime.kmap.gz only if it is not older than the 
configuration file /etc/default/console-setup.  If it is older this means the 
keymap has to be regenerated.

In order to avoid future time consuming regenerations, setupcon has to overwrite 
boottime.kmap.gz.  But this file is situated in /etc so accordingly to the policy 
it is a configuration file and may not be overwriten without administrator's 
knowledge.

I'd like to ask if I can make an exception for this case.  The standard solution -- 
move boottime.kmap.gz from /etc to /var -- is not available because setupcon must 
be able to work when /var is not yet mounted.

Anton Zinoviev