Re: /etc getting big

[Jukka Neppius <jkn@softavenue.fi>]

Bill Allombert <allomber@math.u-bordeaux.fr> writes:

> Hello,
> 
> /etc must be in / and / is supposed to be keep small.
> 
> Since almost every packages add files to /etc and they may survive
> the removal of the package, /Etc may get big with time.





Debian Weekly News - May 22nd, 2001 wrote:
> Bloated /etc. /etc is supposed to be small, since it has to be in /.
> However, some packages put some big files in there; samba has it's
> codepages directory taking 2.5MB. Bill Allombert raised[2] the
> issue, and the general consensus was that this should be fixed by
> moving some of those files from /etc to /usr/share.

Probably i was first (Bug#96391)  :)

I understand old Unix idea was that '/' has files needed to bring
system up to single user state, mount /usr and restore backups.
 
So for example /etc/X11 would not belong to /etc.  Most modules would
go into /usr/lib not into /lib.  I think it is good to have all
configuration files in one place.  Perhaps /usr/config ?


- Jukka