Subject: Re: /var/cron -> /etc/cron
To: Robert Elz <kre@munnari.OZ.AU>
From: Feico Dillema <dillema@acm.org>
List: current-users
Date: 04/02/1999 16:31:42
Your message dated: Fri, 02 Apr 1999 23:35:30 +1000
>    Date:        Fri, 02 Apr 1999 14:56:52 +0200
>    From:        Feico Dillema <dillema@acm.org>
>    Message-ID:  <199904021256.OAA13251@dillema.cs.uit.no>
>
>  | Is there value in hte idea, to move user-modifiable (like users' crontabs)
>  | files into a /usr/etc directory?
>
>Please, no, /usr is already able to be made read only, let's not break that.

Ah yes, I was already afraid I was typing before I thought it through ;}.

But, somehow I feel user-configurable stuff should be moved out of root
and as you say it shouldn't be in /usr too. Most user-configurable
application-level stuff is put in users' homedirectories. For cron, I guess
the problem with putting a user's crontab is that a crontab is now local
to a machine, while users' homedirectories are often shared among machines,
i.e. NFS-mounted. But couldn't we solve that by adding a `hostname' field
to crontab entries, or encode it in the tab-name, like: /home/<user>
/.cron/<hostname>?

I guess there are a number of problems with this (security?), so fire away ;-}.

Feico.