On Wed, Dec 26, 2001 at 10:59:12PM -0500, der Mouse wrote:
> > Since the system-provided scripts and defaults files are not meant to
> > be modified by the end-user, [...]
> 
> I'm not surprised to hear this, though it seems to me like a rather
> sleazy way of sliding this change in.  (Yes, it is a change; it didn't
> used to be the case that the boot scripts were not considered
> user-modifiable.)  "You'll run what we provide, and like it."

  Think of it as simply migrating /etc/{rc.d,defaults} to the same status
as, say, /usr/src/usr.bin  As it stands now and always has, folks who want
to make local changes to system-supplied binaries are required to maintain
their own patches through updates.  So why shouldn't that apply to those
parts of /etc that are considered to be a standard part of the distribution,
not intended to be routinely used for specifying local configuration?
Anyone who has evolved a simple, standard procedure for maintaining local
patches to source code should find it trivial to extend that procedure to
any required patches in /etc/{rc.d,defaults}.

  Alternatively, one is always free to copy, say, /etc/rc.d/sshd to
/etc/rc.d/sshd.local and modify the latter in arbitrary ways, so long as its
rcvar differs from that of the original sshd (so you can say something like:
"sshd=NO; sshd_local=YES" in /etc/rc.conf).