Re: Proposal: /etc /usr/etc /usr/local/etc

[Nils Rennebarth <nils@nus.de>]

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I should quote some short passages from the mentioned transname patch in
case you won't like to unpack the whole 2.1 kernel tree:

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[...]
Linux transname overcomes this problem by allowing filenames
to be context-dependend. For example, if you have a file /etc/config
that should differ on the hosts "myserver" and "myclient", you just
create two different files named /etc/config#host=myserver# and
/etc/config#host=myclient# . On host "myserver", the file
/etc/config#host=myserver# will appear as if it were hardlinked to
file /etc/config (without the #...=...# suffix). On host "myclient",
the corresponding other file will appear as /etc/config. So you
can access the right file contents under the _same_ name, depending
on which host you are working.

[...]
Transname was developped for and is used at our Linux pool at the
University of Stuttgart with good results. Maintainance of the pool is
at a minimum, and adding new clients is a child's play. No worry with
keeping up mail configurations, newly installed tools, changed
/etc/services,
/etc/shells, /etc/resolv.conf and many, many others. In contrast to a
sophisticated symlink solution, adding a new file to the /etc directory
is seen immediately by all clients.

[...]
This sort of name translation works with any underlying file system
and with any inode type (i.e. with directories, symlinks, devices etc),
because it is implemented in the VFS layer of the kernel. Currently,
five types of default translations are supported:

 * <name>#host=<hostname>#  depends on the hostname, see "uname -n"
 * <name>#kname=<string>#   works with a hard compiled-in string
 * <name>#ktype=<string>#   works with a hard compiled-in string
 * <name>#machine=<id>#     depends on architecture, see "uname -m"
 * <name>#system=<id>#      currently only supported by Linux, see "uname -s"

Others may be added in future.
[...]
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Nils

- -- 
     \              /                        | Nils Rennebarth
    --* WINDOWS 42 *--                       | Schillerstr. 61 
     /              \                        | 37083 Göttingen
                                             | ++49-551-71626
   Micro$oft's final answer                  | http://www.nus.de/~nils

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