David Zeuthen wrote:
I'm having trouble parsing that statement. Are you saying that people shouldn't be able to edit their own /etc/xxx files as documented by the upstream programs or that the distribution should move the parts that it modifies with its internal tools elsewhere?There's the bad idea that everything under /etc/ is configurable, but in reality these rules are "program data" and ideally should go into /share if that existed (which would avoid people thinking they're meant to touch that stuff, hopefully).Lots of files under /etc are not marked as %config or %config(noreplace) and they are not really configuration files. It's a problem because novice users just assume they can and should edit such files and then they get confused when said file is overwritten on a package upgrade. Does that make more sense?
It doesn't disambiguate the situation unless you are saying that local administrators should not touch any files. How does a (novice or not) user know which files belong to him but are delivered as working defaults and which will be clobbered by subsequent updates? I thought most of the point of splattering stuff under /etc/sysconfig was to have a place to put distribution-tool managed bits without too much impact on standard, documented config files as they would work in other distributions.
-- Les Mikesell lesmikesell gmail com