Re: Proposal: /etc /usr/etc /usr/local/etc
On Thu, 3 Jul 1997 J.R.Blaakmeer@student.utwente.nl wrote:
[.. snip ..]
> You could run a script regularly on all workstations at boot time (or from
> the crontab if they don't boot very often), that would check if there were
> any new files in /usr/etc. A file would be 'new' if there wasn't a symlink
> (with the same name) to it in /etc and if there wasn't a file with the same
> name in /etc. I can't imagine writing such a script will be difficult.
Isn't this a special case, though, of the more general situation of
a change in the root partition of the central machine (the one providing
the shared /usr filesystem) having had a change made in its root
partition which needs to be propagated to all the debian machines
sharing its /usr filesystem? Such a change might as easily be due
to a new /bin/bash binary having been installed due to a bash package
upgrade or due to a site-specific manual change maqde by the sysadmin
to /etc/profile as it might be due to config files moving between /etc
and /usr/etc.
It seems to me that there is one class of files which the outlying
machines need to keep sync'd with the common machine (e.g., /bin/bash,
/etc/profile), and another set of files which the outlying machines
want to keep machine-specific (e.g., /etc/hostname). Given this, it
seems more logical to me to have one general-purpose script to
do all of the necessary root filesystem sync'ing than to have
one script to track config file changes and other scripts to do
other needed sync'ing.
> > > - Have one workstation that is slightly different from the rest and only
> > > place the files that are different in /etc instead of the symlink.
> >
> > What would the difference be? Different emacs config? Why? Let's do
> > it like in other Unices -- there are plenty of config files in /usr,
> > and everyone mounts /usr read-only. What's the problem with Linux,
> > may I ask? What's the difference? For decades we have config files
> > in /usr on other Unices.
As one example, I can imagine different machines needing to have
different ppp configuration files. Those, then, would go directly
into /etc instead of into /usr/etc with a symlink from /etc.
> I was more thinking of one workstation that has one piece of hardware
> different from the others. But if that isn't the case in your situation,
> forget about it.
Yeah. Different video chipset, multiple ethernet cards, different
serial port usage, different (or more, or less) ppp link(s), different
selection of printer, ...
[.. snip ..]
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