I think the points below some up what we want to keep by using the
unix style of configuration. Can we add a style guide for these
configuration files to enable inheritance to be used for more common
settings and a mechanism for dealing with secure configuration sharing
between hosts ? NIS is rather limited and weak, should we support the
NDS inter-host API even if the data is stored in hand managable forms
on the NetBSD host. What about remote management of these
configurations. 

--Sean

On Tue, 9 Dec 1997, Curt Sampson wrote:

> On Tue, 9 Dec 1997, Sean Witham wrote:
> 
> > Where there are databse lookups the databases are built from editable
> > ascii files. If this philosphy was maintained could a scheme be
> > developed that was acceptable ?
> 
> Oh, probably. Possibly even if this wasn't maintained.
> 
> We all agree that some nice directory and configuration services
> would be nice. It's the implementation that's going to provoke the
> arguments: the devil is in the details.
> 
> So here are some of the advantages I see of the Unix way of doing
> things (versus the Novell bindery and the Windows 95/NT registry):
> 
> 1. Files are easily readable/editable by humans, and easily munged
> with regular Unix tools (sed, awk, rcs, etc.).
> 
> 2. Applications generally don't/can't fiddle with the configuration
> of other applications or other parts of the system.
> 
> 3. If corruption of configuration data occurs, it's unlikely to
> affect more than one application/subsystem.
> 
> 4. One doesn't need anything more than tar to pack up an application
> and all its configuration information and take it elsewhere.
> 
> cjs
> 
> Curt Sampson    cjs@portal.ca	   Info at http://www.portal.ca/
> Internet Portal Services, Inc.	   Through infinite myst, software reverberates
> Vancouver, BC  (604) 257-9400	   In code possess'd of invisible folly.
>