Re: /usr/etc and /usr/local/etc?
On 5 Oct 1999 goswin.brederlow@student.uni-tuebingen.de wrote:
> Date: 05 Oct 1999 23:39:05 +0200
> From: goswin.brederlow@student.uni-tuebingen.de
> To: Richard Kaszeta <kaszeta@me.umn.edu>
> Cc: Martin Schulze <joey@infodrom.north.de>, debian-devel@lists.debian.org
> Subject: Re: /usr/etc and /usr/local/etc?
> Resent-Date: 5 Oct 1999 21:39:55 -0000
> Resent-From: debian-devel@lists.debian.org
> Resent-cc: recipient list not shown: ;
>
> Richard Kaszeta <kaszeta@me.umn.edu> writes:
>
> > Martin Schulze writes ("Re: /usr/etc and /usr/local/etc?"):
> > >Aaron Van Couwenberghe wrote:
> > >> Just a quick inquiry --
> > >>
> > >> Why is it that we exclude /usr/etc from our distribution? FHS and FSSTND
> > >
> > >Because configuration belongs to /etc. Period.
>
> Good point, but etc blows up to quite a size and can´t be shared
> across hosts.
>
> ...
> > Config files are, by their nature, host-specific, and should not be in
> > /usr
>
> They are not. e.g. /etc/hosts should be the same across a pool. Nearly
> all files in /etc can be shared and none should be rewritten on the
> fly.
This is what NIS and NIS+ are for, to share these files across hosts. A lot of
UNIX derived systems end up modifying the normal placement of files because a
few people feel they have a "better" way to do things. The end result is the
mess /etc has become over the years. I would LOVE to see /etc become
configuration files only, with NO binaries in there at all. To be able to do an
rgrep in /etc to find a config, and never have binary "garbage" fly across the
screen would make life a LOT easier. Programs such as gated which install
themselves in /etc as the default also drive me crazy. Now, back on topic, if
you need to share a file NIS/NIS+ will work. Someone else may have a better
solution, such as Samba.
David Bristel
> Apart from /etc/mtab (which can be linked to /proc/mounts) normaly
> nothing gets written to /etc and / can be ro. For diskless systems
> /usr/etc and /usr/share/etc could reduce the size of the ramdisk or
> root fs needed to boot and more data could be shared across a pool.
>
> Alternatively /etc/share/, /etc/arch and /etc/local could be
> used. Just as one likes.
>
> May the Source be with you.
> Goswin
>
>
> --
> To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-request@lists.debian.org
> with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@lists.debian.org
>
Reply to: