From owner-freebsd-arch Thu Aug 31 18: 0:15 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Received: from pike.osd.bsdi.com (pike.osd.bsdi.com [204.216.28.222]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 264DA37B422 for ; Thu, 31 Aug 2000 18:00:12 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from jhb@localhost) by pike.osd.bsdi.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) id RAA12388; Thu, 31 Aug 2000 17:59:58 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from jhb) From: John Baldwin Message-Id: <200009010059.RAA12388@pike.osd.bsdi.com> Subject: Re: Request for review: nsswitch In-Reply-To: <200009010047.RAA43862@vashon.polstra.com> from John Polstra at "Aug 31, 2000 05:47:13 pm" To: arch@FreeBSD.ORG Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2000 17:59:58 -0700 (PDT) Cc: n@nectar.com X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL68 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG John Polstra wrote: > In article <20000831130504.A26641@hamlet.nectar.com>, > Jacques A. Vidrine wrote: > > On Fri, Sep 01, 2000 at 02:34:02AM +0900, Daniel C. Sobral wrote: > > > The reason is the following: when upgrading, merging changes to defaults > > > against user modifications is not only very hard, but we have no support > > > for it at all with our tools. > > > > The defaults for nsswitch.conf will not change, ever. They have been > > chosen to emulate the traditional behavior. > > I have to agree with Daniel here. The whole point of nsswitch.conf is > so you can customize it, right? Otherwise why bother with it? We are > moving toward using immutable default versions in /etc/defaults with > customizable overrides in /etc. That has made dealing with rc.conf > and make.conf much, much easier. I think the ultimate goal should be > that the admin can customize his /etc directory without the need to do > _any_ merging. That means the defaults and the overrides have to be > separated. Erm, nssswitch.conf will not be a very active file like make.conf or rc.conf. > ls -l /etc | grep -v '^[dl]' | wc -l 81 > ls -l /etc/defaults | grep -v '^[dl]' | wc -l 5 I don't think we need 80 files in /etc/defaults. Thus far, the files we have put in /etc/defaults are ones that are changed very often, and thus can present problems with merging, e.g. rc.conf, make.conf, etc. Also, they are files where you can simply maintain a small file in /etc to override default settings. We don't have ttys, resolv.conf, syslog.conf, newsyslog.conf, shells, remote, modems, pam.conf, host.conf, inetd.conf, or any of several other files in /etc/defaults, and we don't need them there. nsswitch.conf will basically take the place of host.conf when this is done. /usr/src/etc/host.conf is on revision 1.6 after being in the tree _seven_ years. 3 of these commits are due to $FreeBSD$. Thus, since its import, it has had all of 2 actual commits, one to add a comment, and one to change the order. Putting host.conf in /etc/defaults would just be dumb. Same with nsswitch.conf. > John > -- > John Polstra jdp@polstra.com > John D. Polstra & Co., Inc. Seattle, Washington USA -- John Baldwin -- http://www.FreeBSD.org/~jhb/ PGP Key: http://www.cslab.vt.edu/~jobaldwi/pgpkey.asc "Power Users Use the Power to Serve!" - http://www.FreeBSD.org/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-arch" in the body of the message