Re: postinstall wiped out my /etc/rc changes

[David Holland <dholland+netbsd%eecs.harvard.edu@localhost>]

On Fri, May 02, 2008 at 03:37:00PM +0000, Steven M. Bellovin wrote:
 > I think it's more complex than that.  It isn't obvious -- at least not
 > to me -- which files in /etc are "owned" by the system (and hence are
 > fair game for auto-replacement), and which are owned by the
 > administrator.  (I raised similar questions a few months ago about the
 > power management scripts.)  We need a clear, clean way to make that
 > distinction, and to make it obvious to the community.

I agree.

At the risk of opening a can of worms, I'd argue that anything in /etc
that is *not* meant to be administrator-modified should be moved out
of /etc, to /libexec or /libdata or /usr/share or whatever.

Doing this right would in some cases require being able to read the
contents from two places (e.g. /libdata/services and /etc/services) or
partitioning the contents of files and reworking the config formats
(e.g., inetd.conf; the definitions of the standard services should be
tucked away in /usr/share) or other hacking.

Trouble is, a lot of this stuff is standardized by historic practice
and changing it around won't be popular. (Even if done right.)

-- 
   - David A. Holland / dholland+netbsd%eecs.harvard.edu@localhost