On Sat, 10 Apr 1999, Curt Sampson wrote:

# On Fri, 9 Apr 1999, Gandhi woulda smacked you wrote:
# 
# > I am still of the opinion that user EDITABLE files shouldn't be living 
# > in /etc...
# 
# That's fine. I notice you've already moved named and will move
# cron, if it ends up in /etc. You'll also want to move /etc/skeykeys
# and the /etc/passwd set, and possibly /etc/mk.conf as well, if you
# have one.

Ohhh, boy, I've really stuck my foot in it, and provided an ill definition
to boot!

I have no intention of moving {,master.}passwd, mk.conf or skeykeys out of
/etc.  Those strike me as system files rather than user files.

[dig deeper, greywolf...]

.uhhh, hmm.

# My point is not that it's unreasonable to ban user-edited files
# from /etc, my point is that we've not done this to this point, and
# that to do this breaks other principles of /etc vs /var that appear
# to me to be more important.

But there are currently no user-edited files in /etc at the moment,
for what it's worth (note: you seem to consider user-edited to include
the super-user, while I differentiate between the two).

# In other words, I feel you're saying that the principle that
# user-changable files not go in /etc is more important than the
# principle that vital configuration information be put in /etc.

Aha.  Okay, that's not what I meant to impart (but somehow did, wups).
No, vital configuration information definitely goes into /etc.  However,
this seems to be throwing the ship onto a hard reverse tack (watch the
boom), and it's confusing because now, implied by your tack that we should
move cron into /etc, crontabs are considered vital configuration
information...?  Or did I misread the above statement?  I didn't see
crontabs as a particularly vital piece of configuration, which was another
reason for leaving them in /var.

# But you've not given me any compelling reason that this should be
# what we encourage *all* NetBSD users to do, because we feel that
# on the majority of systems out there this is a more important
# requirement than making crontabs easily backed up.

Nor should there have been, as stated above.  My point on backups was
actually a reference to something someone else had brought up.  I don't
necessarily agree with it, I was tossing it in as an 'if this then that'
kind of deal and trying to illustrate why it doesn't (necessarily) work.

# 
# cjs
# -- 
# Curt Sampson  <cjs@cynic.net>   604 801 5335   De gustibus, aut bene aut nihil.
# The most widely ported operating system in the world: http://www.netbsd.org
# 
# 


				--*greywolf;
--
"Microsoft asks you where you want to go.  UNIX gets you there."
							-- david@mono.org