Proposed guideline for init script files

[Michael Schwendt]

On Wed, 28 Feb 2007 22:32:47 +0100, Enrico Scholz wrote:

> >> /etc is the classical location for configuration files and I
> >> *expect* that I can edit things there resp. that my changes are
> >> not lost silently.
> >
> > /etc contains things, such as GConf2 schema files, which you are not
> > supposed to edit.
> 
> Then, they do not belong into /etc and should be moved out it.

Even if they contain configuration related defaults? They can be used to
reinstall the configuration database with package defaults. Think of them
like constants. You *could* edit them, but it would not by typical usage
in gconftool-2 world, since even site-wide defaults are created in
different files and in a different way.

There are also normal configuration files in /etc, which are recreated
("overwritten"), if a configuration utility is used instead of editing
them manually. With such an operation your changes would be lost silently,
too.

I can follow the requirement that /etc must not contain binaries, but
configuration related static files. I can see the historical importance of
keeping service initscripts in the configuration area to allow for
configuration changes directly in the shell scripts. But only *if* there
is no other place where to customise the service config, e.g. /etc/sysconfig.