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Date: Sun, 24 Aug 2008 03:45:45 +0200
From: Polytropon <freebsd@edvax.de>
To: Gary Kline <kline@thought.org>
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Cc: FreeBSD Mailing List <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org>
Subject: Re: Why /usr/local/etc???
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On Sat, 23 Aug 2008 18:24:48 -0700, Gary Kline <kline@thought.org> wrote:
> 	Folks,
> 
> 	This may have been covered too-often before, buy why can't
> 	*everything* related to /etc hang off "/etc"?  I can create a
> 	symlink in /etc to /usr/local/etc named "loc" or "local".  
> 	Thing is, why this isn't done by default?

Maybe you're coming from a Linux background, so this may be a valid
question. To introduce, FreeBSD differs between "just the OS", the
things that you install from sysinstall first, and "everything else",
the things you install from the ports collection or from the precompiled
packages. Things that do belong to the OS is located everywhere
outside /usr/local, and everything else is located inside /usr/local,
replicating the subtrees of bin/, lib/, include/, share/ and etc/.

Summarized: In /etc there's the system's configuration, and in
/usr/local/etc there are configurations and settings for ports
and packages you added.

As you may see, this is well intended. Feel free to read

	% man 7 hier 

for a more detailed explaination.



-- 
Polytropon
>From Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...