I appreciate some of the changes made to /etc/rc, rc.local and netstat
done after the release of 1.2.

In particular I like the principle of having /etc/rc.conf.

The problem is that when you update rc and/or netstart, you must often
also update rc.conf because it needs to set some variables needed
by rc/netstart. This may be slightly annoying if you have made changes
to rc.conf, but don't remember exactly which changes.

Here is my idea whenever rc.conf is being sourced, another file (e.g.
rc.conf.site) shall be sourced if it exists. In the release, this
file either does not exist, or it is essentially empty. In this file
the site administrator will set any variables that are defined in
rc.conf, either because the default is wrong for this site, or because
the administrator wants an explicit local setting.

This will allow me to keep rc.conf unmodified, and therefore I can
update it whenever the distributed version changes without wiping
out my own changes.

I can see one down-side of this proposal: It adds yet another optional
file, where you can set options that can also be set elsewhere...

Comments ?

Erik Bertelsen