/etc /usr/etc: solution?

[Vadim Vygonets <vadik@cs.huji.ac.il>]

Let's come to a solution.

There are two variants (speaking of the packages which live in /usr):

1. Have config files in /usr/etc and that's it.

2. Have config files in /usr/etc, but search /etc first (i.e., write a
statically-linked lib to do it -- I will).

The policy about which config files should live in /usr/etc and which
ones in /etc is approx like this:

1. If the program lives in /bin or /sbin, its config files should be
in /etc.  Examples: all the stuff usually found in /etc, like inittab,
crontab, timezone, and sudoers, super...  Plus things like
/etc/kbd/default.map, /etc/modules and such.

2. If the program lives in /usr but its config files have to be
machine-local, and it's widely agreed in other Unices to have config
files in root partition, they should live in /etc.  Examples: inetd,
sendmail, svgamode, dosemu, XF86Config, gpm...  What about mime.types?
I think this one too.

3. If the program lives in /usr, and there is no reason to put its
config files in the root partition, they should be in /usr/etc.
XResources, Xsesson, windiw managers, pine.conf, lynx.cfg,
xearth.markers, ytalkrc, emacs config files...  About lftp.conf: I
don't think it's a good idea to have a global conffile for it at all.

4. If the config file are not platform-specific, they should live in
/usr/share/etc.  Many examples from <3> can go here.  Comments on this
one?

5. /usr/local/etc for site-local installations.

6. After all, you receive the source code made for other Unices, so
why don't you look there?

And let Debian be a freeware standard Unix, as standard as it can be.
IMHO, it's exactly what we need.

Vadik.

--
Vadim Vygonets * vadik@cs.huji.ac.il * vadik@debian.org * Unix admin
The fish doesn't think, because the fish knows...  everything.
	-- Arizona Dream


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