On Tue, Jun 25, 2002 at 01:03:58PM +0800, Grahame Bowland wrote:
> > (Seriously, we could. "Is /var mounted locally?" with a low priority,
> > and a default answer based on grep'ing /etc/fstab, followed by a question
> > about an alternative location that needs to be looked at by packages
> > that run early. Something like:
> What if /var is moved onto a seperate partition once the installation is
> running?
Then you should be asked where you want such files earlier, rather than
later, see my other messages in this thread.
> It seems sane to leave the files in /etc where they're certainly going to be
> on the root partition, rather than creating more symlink mess.
Except we've already established that's /not/ particularly sane: doing
that we end up with random programs overwriting the admin's settings
in ways that irritate said admin. Creating a new area that's legit for
such random changes, will solve that problem, and using symlinks to
indicate whether that area should be used or not is both efficient and
fairly obvious.
Actually, as well as that, I'd dispute that any errors you'd get from
this would be particularly subtle or non-obvious: /etc/foo: File not
found; ls -l /etc/foo: foo -> /var/lib/managed-configs/etc-foo; "Oh,
I just moved /var to its own partition" seems reasonably straightforward.
I'd think we'd want three main choices:
/var is guaranteed to always be local (default)
/var is on the network, use /site-var for variable data wrt the network
/var is _guaranteed_ to always be on the root partition
And naturally, the admin could change /etc/managed-etc.conf (or whatever)
by hand. ;)
Cheers,
aj
--
Anthony Towns <aj@humbug.org.au> <http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/>
I don't speak for anyone save myself. GPG signed mail preferred.
``BAM! Science triumphs again!''
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