Subject: Re: rc, rc.shutdown proposed change
To: None <tech-userlevel@netbsd.org>
From: Greg A. Woods <woods@most.weird.com>
List: tech-userlevel
Date: 03/13/2000 13:00:02
[ On Sunday, March 12, 2000 at 20:54:07 (+0100), Hubert Feyrer wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: rc, rc.shutdown proposed change
>
> On Sun, 12 Mar 2000, Martin Husemann wrote:
> 
> > > >"What he said."  I think that if an admin wants to create his own rc.d
> > > >scripts, he'll want to have an easy way to identify which scripts are
> > > >his own, and which came with the system (or pkgsrc, or whatever).  It
> > > >should only help if NetBSD provided an easy way to do that.
> > > 
> > > grep -l THISISMINE /etc/rc.d/*
> > 
> > Besides being able to tell which are mine, I don't like new invented system
> > files overwriting my local extensions with the same name by pure chance (or
> > bad naming conventions).
> 
> Yeah. and this is exactly we we don't put pkgs into /usr/bin. :-)

FYI I have been puting packages into /usr, very successfully (i.e. no
conflicts so far in the ~140 odd packages I've acutally found useful and
have installed).

The /var/db/pkg stuff is how you tell which files belong to which
components.  A system re-build is as simple as a base install from
scratch and then installation of all the previously installed packages,
and finally a restore of /etc.

Truly locally installed stuff still goes in /local (or /usr/local).

Now if only the system *and* packages always all kept virgin copies of
all user-modifiable files in a secure place, along with of course a map
of where the "installed" locations of such files are, then system
upgrades would be easier too since just before doing the upgrade one
could create a patch file of localisations and then instead of restoring
/etc one would apply the patch (and of course resolve any conflicts).

Obviously one can do much of this patch creation by manually maintaining
RCS files in /etc and its sub-directories, at least for all those
configuration items which involve only the changing of file contents,
but it would be nice to have built-in support in the base system for
doing this kind of thing too.

-- 
							Greg A. Woods

+1 416 218-0098      VE3TCP      <gwoods@acm.org>      <robohack!woods>
Planix, Inc. <woods@planix.com>; Secrets of the Weird <woods@weird.com>