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Date:      Mon, 24 Jul 1995 19:50:53 -0700 (PDT)
From:      "Rodney W. Grimes" <rgrimes@gndrsh.aac.dev.com>
To:        jkh@time.cdrom.com (Jordan K. Hubbard)
Cc:        current@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Knobs in /etc/sysconfig
Message-ID:  <199507250250.TAA20607@gndrsh.aac.dev.com>
In-Reply-To: <2781.806636239@time.cdrom.com> from "Jordan K. Hubbard" at Jul 24, 95 06:37:19 pm

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> 
> I don't know if Rod is still working on this stuff, but given the
> amount of time that's elapsed I'd say that the statute of limitations
> any developer gets for "locking" things in -current has run out, so
> it's open season again in /usr/src/etc/etc.i386! :-)

I have never locked it, there have been 8 commits to the files I
am working on, I have merger the commit, or tossed it as I had
it solved in another way.

I will say, that last time Jordan had fun in /etc/rc* it was a bloody
mess to clean up.  Something like that done again will upset me very
much, though from the looks of what you want to add it does not
go there anyway, and/or would be nothing more than a block add to
what is already there.

Another thing, /etc/rc* is a delacate balancing act as far as just
what you do when, what we have now is functionaly for most people
but has some sequence problems for others.  These are non-trival
problems to test and require about 15 different machine configurations
to do regression testing.  Since I only have 1 machine to play with
long term on this type of stuff testing goes very very slow.

> Persuant to that, I'd like to add knobs in /etc/sysconfig and
> /etc/<somefile> for turning on such extra services as SNMP, a web
> server, PCNFS, Samba, etc.  This may seem superfluous to some, but
> believe me - I won't be able to make FreeBSD truly plug-n-pray for
> many important tasks without such instrumentation and I think that
> it's pretty important to achieve that at some point.
> 
> For example (from my own setup):
> 
> /etc/sysconfig:
> 
> # set to NO if you don't want CMU SNMP services
> snmp_flags="public ro"
> 
> /etc/netstart:
> 
> if [ "x$snmp_flags" != "xNO" -a -x /usr/local/libexec/snmpd ]; then
>         echo 'snmp daemon: ' /usr/local/libexec/snmpd $snmp_flags &
> fi      

snmpd should not be started from /etc/netstart.  /etc/netstat is only
for bringing the network on line.  It took a lot of work initially by
pts to get the crap out of there, and more cleanup by me to make it
work once it was.  Do not start daemons in /etc/netstart that are not
network routing daemons [if you notice those are the only network
related daemons in /etc/netstart, and they are there as you need them
to have really made the network start].

Also /usr/local stuff does not really belong in there, a site may very 
well have to modify that path (gated is that way now, but that is dead
in my configuration and sysconfig now $gated_bin and $gatedflags, if
gated_bin defaults to /usr/local/sbin/gated, but at least you can
override it without editing netstart.

> And so forth.  Rather than seeing this bloom out of control, I tend to
> suspect more that this will plateau out at around 10-15 additional
> services max and give us easy instrumentation of a whole range of
> important services.  Activation than then be reduced to a simple
> pkg_add, a tweak in /etc/sysconfig and the possible setup of a
> configuration file (which would also be handled through the auspices
> of whatever program did the /etc/sysconfig tweaking, probably).
> 
> Comments?

Why not appended it to /etc/rc.local, and append the variable settings
in /etc/sysconfig.local, have /etc/sysconfig source /etc/sysconfig.local
at the end of it.


-- 
Rod Grimes                                      rgrimes@gndrsh.aac.dev.com
Accurate Automation Company                 Reliable computers for FreeBSD



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