Re: Putting default config files in /usr [was; (newbie) Disruptive LIRC package update.]
Josselin Mouette wrote:
> Marc Haber <mh+debian-devel@zugschlus.de> wrote:
> On Wed, 11 Nov 2015 21:58:13 +0100, Jean-Christophe Dubacq <jcdubacq1@free.fr> wrote:
> >[ ? 11/11/2015 18:14 ] [ ? Marc Haber ]
> >> Once and for all we're doing _SOMETHING_ right, let's keep it that
> >> way.
> >I do not agree that we are doing something exactly right. I would like
> >/etc to only contain what I changed (as a sysadmin), and nothing else ;
>
> That is not what an experienced Unix Admin would expect. We should not
> do that.
>
> As an experienced Unix admin, I hate having to comb through megabytes of
> useless files in /etc to look for what has been actually changed on the
> system.
Agreed. I think the mythical "experienced UNIX admin" is quite capable
of learning new things, especially when those things make their life
easier.
> The very fact that people need to use specific tools such as etckeeper,
> just to be able to see what has been configured, shows that we are doing
> something wrong, not the other way round.
While I still think etckeeper makes sense (and works even better) with
only admin changes kept in /etc, I'd certainly love it if I could tell
exactly what's *unique* about a given system by looking at the tiny
handful of files in /etc.
A few weeks ago, I set up a new virtual server to replace my previous
one, and I needed to migrate all the configuration over from one to the
other. (In the process, I also upgraded to the latest stable version of
Debian instead of oldstable.) Installing Debian took a few minutes.
Migrating the configuration across, even *with* the help of etckeeper,
took the better part of a day, most of which was spent staring at and
filtering diffs between two versions of /etc, and attempting to find my
own configuration changes out of the mountain of irrelevant changes
between stable releases in order to find my own configuration bits.
By contrast, if /etc contained only my changes, I'd have had a far
easier time with that migration.
- Josh Triplett
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