Date: Mon, 24 Jul 1995 20:21:04 -0700 From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> To: "Rodney W. Grimes" <rgrimes@gndrsh.aac.dev.com> Cc: current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Knobs in /etc/sysconfig Message-ID: <3089.806642464@time.cdrom.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Mon, 24 Jul 1995 19:50:53 PDT." <199507250250.TAA20607@gndrsh.aac.dev.com>
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> 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
OK, well, the last time this came up I thought you had asserted some
control in that area by flaming someone for making a change. Glad to
know I was wrong.
> 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
This is a silly thing to say. Everyone here knows exactly why I did
what I did in /etc and "having fun" was hardly at the top of my list
of goals, nor is it something that I'll have to do again since I
accomplished my objective, whcih was breaking free the long-standing
log jam of multiple intertwined crusty files in /etc, and at this
point all I need to do is refine it. I make no apologies whatsoever
for my previous dive into /etc and if you hadn't gone ballistic and
jumped in there immediately then I or someone else would have and we'd
still have something far better than what we had before.
> 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.
I do understand this, and I also understand that two objectives are
NOT obtainable on the first face of any change to the sysconfig knobs:
1. Everyone being happy in all possible scenarios.
2. Us even knowing all possible scenarios.
So this means that any change is going to have to settle for making a
_reasonable_ number of people happy (the set of which may or may not
include yourself, but that's irrelevant if it's still a reasonably
large set) and it's going to have to deal with the possiblity of
evolution as people play with it and report unforseen behavior in
response to unusual, site-specific circumstances.
I can live with this and I don't seem to find this acknowledgement of
reality as painful as you apparently do.
> 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
So put the change in rc.local. Or, better yet, make an rc.locald
directory and organize the various types of startup (networking, i386,
site) into classes, one startup file per class. Then rc.local can go
away (yes! die! die!) and we can have one addition to the bottom of
/etc/rc like this:
# Fill in the types of local startup scripts you have
LOCAL_SCRIPTS= network i386
if [ -d /etc/rc.locald ]; then \
for i in ${LOCAL_SCRIPTS}; do \
if [ -f /etc/rc.locald/$$i ]; then \
sh /etc/rc.locald/$$i; \
fi \
done \
fi
And I'd really rather not hear anybody whining about how this is a bad
idea just because it looks sort of like SYSV. It's a REASONABLE
abstraction and it solves some problems that I personally want to
solve, so what's the problem? I'm happy to hear about other
_solutions_, but I'm not inclined to listen to people just shooting
down this kind of thing on general principle. I'm trying to automate
some things that really need automating for those without prior
FreeBSD admin experience and the fact that a lot of the hackers here
know how to do it by hand with their eyes closed isn't really that
relevant.
> 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.
I rather like the /etc/sysconfig.local idea, but I'd still prefer to
couple it with something like the above rather than tossing all the
knob-ends into /etc/rc.local. Sticking them into a subdir means less
things we'll have to contend with overlaying when upgrading.
As you might expect, upgrading is big on my mind right now. It's
Jordan's other personal crusade at the moment, in fact..
Jordan
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