Re: /usr/etc and /usr/local/etc?

[Brian May <bam@snoopy.apana.org.au>]

In article <[🔎] 873dvpa3nq.fsf@mrvnbook.intern.lin4net.de> you write:
>> 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.

Agreed. My diskless package needlessly has to copy the entire
contents of /etc for every host, since it cannot be shared.

However, how would you distinguish a shareable config file from a
non-shareable config file? eg would {samba,squid,etc} be sharable???
(not that you would normally run these on a diskless system).

I think if you are going to use /usr/etc, programs should first check
/etc, in case the system administrator wishes to override the sharable
config file for the given host.

IMHO, only a few files in /etc are not sharable, eg /etc/hostname
/etc/mailname, /etc/news/whoami (I may have these names wrong), possibly
mail configuration, network configuration (actually, this is sharable if
kernel level auto IP configuration is enabled). Please tell me if I missed
anything.

On the downside, it is possible that it might simplify my diskless
package (need to think about this more). Yuck - can't have that ;-).

>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.

I prefer /usr/etc, as this means a seperate mount point is
not required, as /usr is already shared.
-- 
Brian May <bam@snoopy.apana.org.au>