[Fedora-directory-devel] Please review: Bug 227771: FHS: use sysconfdir (/etc) as config file location

[Dennis Gilmore]

On Friday 09 February 2007 11:37, Richard Megginson wrote:
> Howard Chu wrote:
> >> Date: Fri, 09 Feb 2007 08:15:11 -0700
> >>
> > > From: Richard Megginson <rmeggins at redhat.com>
> >>
> >> Andrew Bartlett wrote:
> >>> > On Thu, 2007-02-08 at 20:23 -0800, Pete Rowley wrote:
> >>> >
> >>> > The debian folks (who take FHS seriously) won't buy that.  The
> >>>
> >>> real test
> >>>
> >>> > is the ability to have a read only /etc.  This sounds like a /var/lib
> >>> > thing.  >
> >>> > Before you get into pain over this, I suggest finding a FHS expert.
> >>
> >> Does Debian forbid cfengine?  webmin?  If you do need to occasionally
> >> edit a config file, do you have to change the permissions on /etc to
> >> read-write, then change it back?
> >
> > For a lot of secure installs, yes, this is what's done.
>
> What does openldap do on those systems when using back-config?  Do you
> have a symlink from /etc/openldap/config to /var/whatever, so that
> people looking for some config can find it?
>
> > > Note that even files such as
> >>
> >> /etc/fstab can be dynamic as devices/filesystems are dynamically
> >> mounted/unmounted.
> >
> > Actually fstab is just a static file. You might be thinking of mtab.
> > Some of these things just get symlinked to /var/run which is writable.
>
> No, on my system /etc/fstab is dynamically updated - so is /etc/mtab.
hal dynamically adjusts fstab now when you hot plug devices  that can be 
mounted. 

> I guess what I'm trying to determine is - who can definitively answer
> this question?
>
> However, if /etc really is sometimes mounted read-only, then there are a
> couple of options:
1)  your on crack
2) you are on some embeded something funky and most of your filesystem is read 
only  you need to create funky symlinks.  openwrt comes to mind.  and you 
know how to deal with it .


-- 
Dennis Gilmore, RHCE