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Re: conffiles versus configuration files



>>>>> On 25 Apr 1998 02:56:05 -0500, Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@datasync.com> said:

 Manoj> Hi,
 >>> "Kai" == Kai Henningsen <kaih@khms.westfalen.de> writes:


 Kai> /var/list/.bin/mimencap.local /var/list/.etc/archive.txt
 Kai> /var/list/.etc/help.txt /var/list/.etc/rc.archive
 Kai> /var/list/.etc/rc.custom /var/list/.etc/rc.main
 Kai> /var/list/.etc/rc.post /var/list/.etc/rc.request
 Kai> /var/list/.etc/rc.submit /var/list/.etc/subscribe.txt
 Kai> /var/list/.etc/unsubscribe.txt

 Manoj> 	What on earth are these files? If they are user
 Manoj> 	configurable,
 Manoj>  how come they are in hidden directories? Why are they not in
 Manoj>  a subdir of /etc, with a symlink as needed? This seems like a
 Manoj>  bug to me.

These files I understand.  They are smartlist files (if I'm not
mistaken) and you get a new set of them for each list you run.  Each
list uses the default in .etc.

The reason they can't really be put in /etc is that hard links are
made between each of these files and the same file in each of the
lists's setups.  This way the new list uses the defaults unless the
file is explicitly unlinked from the default file.  If the files were
in /etc this wouldn't be possible (my /var and /etc aren't on the same
filesystem at least). (though oddly this isn't the case with the local
config files in the announce list for smartlist)

Now arguably smartlist doesn't have  a very good configuration setup,
but as long as it works this way and no one fixes it it makes sense to 
me to have these as conffiles in /var.

Dres
-- 
@James LewisMoss <dres@dimensional.com> |  Blessed Be!
@    http://www.dimensional.com/~dres   |  Linux is kewl!
@"Argue for your limitations and sure enough, they're yours." Bach


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