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Date:      Wed, 2 Dec 1998 21:21:15 +0000
From:      Nik Clayton <nik@nothing-going-on.demon.co.uk>
To:        "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@zippy.cdrom.com>, Bruce Evans <bde@zeta.org.au>
Cc:        dillon@apollo.backplane.com, current@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Uh oh...
Message-ID:  <19981202212115.51555@nothing-going-on.org>
In-Reply-To: <7532.912603056@zippy.cdrom.com>; from Jordan K. Hubbard on Wed, Dec 02, 1998 at 04:50:56AM -0800
References:  <199812021233.XAA07714@godzilla.zeta.org.au> <7532.912603056@zippy.cdrom.com>

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On Wed, Dec 02, 1998 at 04:50:56AM -0800, Jordan K. Hubbard wrote:
> > `make world' is not permitted to change /etc.  Especially not
> > /etc/master.passwd when installing to DESTDIR=/mnt/root.
> 
> Normally I'd agree, but...  Your counter-suggestion?

Documentation. Section 2 of the make-world tutorial talks about this
(although admittedly it only talks about /etc/group, but I can fix
that easily enough).

As somone else has pointed out, I think it's legitimate for the first
stage of 'installworld' to check for problems like this and bail out, 
or simply install using UIDs instead of names. I try and make sure 
people are told they have to upgrade /etc whenever make-world problems
crop up on the lists.

Hmm, here's an evil idea (and yes, I have no idea how difficult it would
be to implement it). Where's the "/etc/" part of the configuration 
filenames hardcoded? It looks like it's mostly in libc/gen/get*. Could
you build a special version of this library that looked in $DESTDIR/etc,
and link 'install' with this library while doing the installation.

With ELF, you might just be able to set LD_LIBRARY_PATH appropriately,
no?

Then, for the purposes of the installworld you can use usernames instead 
of UIDs without install complaining. It doesn't buy you much after that
though if people haven't merged in the changes to /etc.

Of course, this still lets people shoot their own foot by not passing
the same DESTDIR value to the buildworld and installworld targets, but
they'll have problems if they do that now anyway (and it's documented
as such).

N
-- 
	    C.R.F. Consulting -- we're run to make me richer. . .

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