Bug#22935: PROPOSED] Do not make hardlinks to conffiles
On Tue, Jun 20, 2000 at 10:01:16PM -0500, Steve Greenland wrote:
> On 20-Jun-00, 17:00 (CDT), Julian Gilbey <J.D.Gilbey@qmw.ac.uk> wrote:
> > On Tue, Jun 20, 2000 at 10:08:30AM -0700, Chris Waters wrote:
> > > Rationale: this is because an admin might edit a conffile without
> > > updating the links, resulting in an inconsistent system.
> >
> > I don't believe that this is the problem. As far as I understood it,
> > what happens is this. Call the files /etc/foo.conf (the conffile) and
> > /var/pkg/conf (the hardlink).
> >
> > (1) Sysadmin edits /var/pkg/conf. No problems: /etc/foo.conf remains
> > a hardlink to /var/pkg/conf and the files are still in sync.
>
> Not necessarily true -- it depends on the editor. Some editors "edit"
> /etc/foo.conf by creating a copy, and then moving the copy over the
> original when a save occurs. For example, emacs can be configured to
> behave this way. If this is done, the hardlink is broken.
>
> But your rationale (2) is also correct and sufficient.
I now understand. I think we could even have both present.
Julian
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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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