Date: Fri, 3 Jan 2003 10:41:08 +0200 From: Neil Blakey-Milner <nbm@mithrandr.moria.org> To: Jordan K Hubbard <jkh@queasyweasel.com> Cc: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com>, wgrim@siue.edu, phk@FreeBSD.ORG, kientzle@acm.org, freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Reading rc.conf from C programs? Message-ID: <20030103084108.GB61889@mithrandr.moria.org> In-Reply-To: <8183059A-1E9C-11D7-883C-000393BB9222@queasyweasel.com> References: <3E14B087.EC43701B@mindspring.com> <8183059A-1E9C-11D7-883C-000393BB9222@queasyweasel.com>
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On Thu 2003-01-02 (13:52), Jordan K Hubbard wrote:
> In hindsight, if we'd really wanted a key/value pair database then we
> should have done it in XML and simply dealt with it at arm's length
> through a accessor utility, e.g. instead of:
>
> case ${ipsec_enable} in
>
> We'd have:
>
> case `sysconfig -r ipsec_enable` in
>
> Or something to that effect.
>
> If you're really looking for "the real solution" underlying this
> problem then you need to look past the format being used at the moment
> and at the fundamental problem it was originally trying to solve.
Hi Jordan,
I'd probably rather have a program to export the whole configuration
into the environment, but obviously this does mean there's no dynamic
query. Dynamic query might be nice, since it would start using, for
example, network configuration once it is available.
I've proposed before that we have an sh script that can be sourced and
it'll magically do whatever is necessary to put the configuration into
the environment - ideally there'd be a C library that'd do the same.
Although it's ugly to look at (since 'ed' is the only text manipulation
available), I show in
http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=68185+0+archive/2002/freebsd-arch/20020414.freebsd-arch
how we can take the output of any given command ("backend") that is in
the 'foo="blah"' format and export it into the shell environment.
So, if we had a "/etc/rc.backend" that is either symlinked to or
executes the backend (say, "sysconfig -a"), then we can dynamically
generate the configuration from over the network (assuming we've managed
to get that set up) using LDAP or netinfo. Possibly, libsysconfig would
provide the same functionality for C programs, similar to PAM or
nsswitch.
Actually, for me it doesn't matter, so long as we actually get over the
hurdle of not being able to read/edit the configuration automatically.
If we'd done it when I originally suggested it in 2000, we'd have tons
of excellent tools like thefish already.
Neil
--
Neil Blakey-Milner
nbm@mithrandr.moria.org
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