From owner-freebsd-hackers Fri Apr 17 16:31:42 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id QAA07871 for freebsd-hackers-outgoing; Fri, 17 Apr 1998 16:31:42 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from euthyphro.uchicago.edu (euthyphro.uchicago.edu [128.135.21.31]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id XAA07791 for ; Fri, 17 Apr 1998 23:31:23 GMT (envelope-from sfarrell@phaedrus.uchicago.edu) Received: from phaedrus.uchicago.edu (phaedrus [128.135.21.10]) by euthyphro.uchicago.edu (8.8.6/8.8.4) with ESMTP id SAA06476; Fri, 17 Apr 1998 18:30:47 -0500 (CDT) Received: (from sfarrell@localhost) by phaedrus.uchicago.edu (8.8.8/8.8.5) id SAA02896; Fri, 17 Apr 1998 18:30:44 -0500 (CDT) To: Snob Art Genre Cc: Bob Bishop , Mike Smith , hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Discussion : Using DHCP to obtain configuration. References: From: sfarrell+lists@farrell.org Mime-Version: 1.0 (generated by tm-edit 7.108) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Date: 17 Apr 1998 18:30:44 -0500 In-Reply-To: Snob Art Genre's message of "Fri, 17 Apr 1998 15:45:16 -0400 (EDT)" Message-ID: <874szsnhzv.fsf@phaedrus.uchicago.edu> Lines: 33 X-Mailer: Gnus v5.6.3/XEmacs 20.4 - "Emerald" Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Snob Art Genre writes: > Yes! Has anyone here ever tried to fix a NeXTStep box when NetInfo > was spammed? It's not pretty, I assure you. Ugh... Can't some kind of duality be established that gets the best of both worlds? Use nsswitch.conf file that call tell it to e.g., first look in the database and then in files for all information. Additionally, some provision is made for the new system to auto-generate required files in /etc? Oh.. and while I'm dreaming, how about using portalfs or similar as such: mount /etc with portalfs and have a translator present all of the data from the database in traditional format. So vi /etc/rc.conf, e.g., would just work, even though you'd actually be read/writing directly to the database (a little like vipw, but with more magic). Similarly this mechanism would maintain a backup of /etc in files as mentioned in the previous paragraph. This would be *outstanding* b/c one of the most annoying things about non-traditional config systems is that they are difficult to figure out since nothing is where it is "supposed to be". Moreover, an environmental variable (SYSTEM_CONFIG_STYLE=SysV, e.g.) could control the apparent layout of /etc. (returning to planet earth...) -- Steve Farrell To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message