Policy Weekly Issue #4/5: Shared configuration files for news servers

[ian@chiark.greenend.org.uk (Ian Jackson)]

I disagree with the following part:
>                                                       If any package has a
>        large number of configuration files, (like, for example, inn does),
>        then a package specific subdirectory under /etc/news should be used
>        (example: /etc/news/suck or /etc/news/inn).

For two reasons:

Firstly, news systems are not going to have so many files that
/etc/news becomes unmanageable.  Putting things in subdirectories will
simply make them hard to find.  There is little danger of clashing
configuration files, and this can be avoided with a little care.

Secondly, the INN package already puts its files in /etc/news
directly.  Moving configuration files is an error-prone and fragile
business.  We should leave the files where they are.

Ian.