> > I've just started to write a library routine which extracts all
> > kinds of defaults. It is a bit different from the svr4 implementation.
> 
> Are not some of these defaults encoded in other ways in NetBSD?  I'm
> just thinking of the ways to avoid duplication of admin info....

Gah, now i realized why this makes me a bit queasy: it's like
app-defaults files, but for standard system programs!!!

some 'defaults' are settable via environment variables, and some are
set via config files; in most cases, those have some 'history' behind
them, i'd guess...


> > And while we are at svr4: I think some of the ideas there are worth
> > taking a look at. One is the inittab stuff, the other is the nsswitch.
> 
> I've been planning to implement a SysV style init and use it to replace
> all the /etc/rc* stuff.  There are even some half-baked PD/freeware
> implementations of init itself, so it's more a matter of writing up some
> standard wrapper scripts and re-designing the start-up procedures.

It's not clear to me that having the full SysV inittab generality is
really worthwhile...  (i, personally, have always found the notion of
having N different run levels annoying.  i also find that some of the
things i've seen started from inittab, etc., are just too gross for
words.)


I do like the idea of having umpteen million scripts run at boot-time,
a la SysV, though.



chris