Re: /usr/local stuff [Was Editor and sensible-editor]
> One of the things that really annoys me about prepackaged
> distributions is the way they tend to ignore everything that isn't in
> packages. E.g., the only way to get non-deb GTK themes in
> /usr/local/share/themes recognized by the GTK config is to link them
> into /usr/share/themes, which is really ugly. Same with WindowMaker
> themes.
This is a very valid point. Packages which don't accommodate such
local additions should probably have bug reports (wishlist?) filed
against them.
> I definitely don't think any prepackaged binaries should install
> themselves or any components into /usr/local; OTOH, I don't think it
> should just ignore things installed there, because it seems that
> /usr/local is exactly where you would want to put things like manually
> installed themes.
Of course. The FHS requires this setup.
> How does this connect with the already ensuing conversation? See for
> yourself:
>
> *** profile.orig Wed Jun 16 12:03:43 1999
> --- profile Wed Jun 16 12:04:01 1999
> ***************
> *** 7,9 ****
> --- 7,10 ----
>
> umask 002
> test -x /usr/bin/check-sendfile && /usr/bin/check-sendfile || /bin/true
> + test -f /usr/local/etc/profile && . /usr/local/etc/profile
Eeks, no! There's no such directory as /usr/local/etc. /etc is for
per-machine, non-sharable data. /usr (and by extension /usr/local)
is for sharable data. /usr/local/etc would blur the distinctions
terribly. And of course, all (or almost all) of the files in /etc are
locally-modifiable configuration files anyway, which the sysadmin can
modify without fear of losing the modifications.
> I know that a solution like this would make my life as a sysadmin much
> easier when installing new machines or reinstalling a machine (as I
> had to do last week when I got a new HD), because I could tar up
> /usr/local, untar it on the new machine, and everything on the new
> machine would magically work. (There might be an issue in this
> example regarding the time that the /usr/local tree is mounted, but
> that's another story...)
Tar up /etc and untar that instead, perhaps? As long as the same
packages are installed, it should be fine. This would solve any
issues about /etc/passwd and the like as well.
Julian
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Julian Gilbey, Dept of Maths, QMW, Univ. of London. J.D.Gilbey@qmw.ac.uk
Debian GNU/Linux Developer, see http://www.debian.org/~jdg
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