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

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

On Fri, 4 Jul 1997, Nils Rennebarth wrote:

> 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:
> 
> - ------------------begin quote---------------------
> [...]
> 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"

Mounting /etc from remote host is a Bad Thing.  If you want to change
a local config file, like /etc/inetd.conf, you should change it on a
remote server _and_ on local filesystem.  Bad.

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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