>It evades me why people in the System V world decided that each
>package should have its own startup/shutdown script in /etc.  Why does
>all that hair belong in /etc, instead of in the executables for the
>packages themselves?

Because startup scripts CAN be modified on a per-machine basis.  I do
that on occasion.

I propose the following:

/etc/config/pkg/{start,config,setup,setup.tk}

where pkg is the name of the package,
      start will kick the package to get it going,
      config is a sample config file for it,
      setup is a shell script to make a config file,
      setup.tk is a tk stub for a GUI-ish setup system.

This makes it really simple to backup a machine's ``state'' -- just
tar up /etc/config as a backup.  When something is lost, restore it
and reinstall packages.  Your system returns to normal.

I think some things, like /var/cron/tabs, shouldn't be in /var at all,
in fact.  /etc is machine specific.  There is no way around that at
this stage.  Use /var for run-time stuff, not state and not config
files.

--Michael

--
Michael Graff <explorer@flame.org>        NetBSD is the way to go!
PGP key on a key-server near you!         Rayshade the world!