From owner-freebsd-hackers Mon Apr 7 13:54:23 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id NAA12135 for hackers-outgoing; Mon, 7 Apr 1997 13:54:23 -0700 (PDT) Received: from phaeton.artisoft.com (phaeton.Artisoft.COM [198.17.250.50]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id NAA12130 for ; Mon, 7 Apr 1997 13:54:16 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from terry@localhost) by phaeton.artisoft.com (8.6.11/8.6.9) id NAA02023; Mon, 7 Apr 1997 13:34:15 -0700 From: Terry Lambert Message-Id: <199704072034.NAA02023@phaeton.artisoft.com> Subject: Re: on the subject of changes to -RELEASEs... To: mrm@Mole.ORG (M.R.Murphy) Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 13:34:15 -0700 (MST) Cc: msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au, terry@lambert.org, avalon@coombs.anu.edu.au, hackers@freebsd.org In-Reply-To: <199704071834.LAA17852@meerkat.mole.org> from "M.R.Murphy" at Apr 7, 97 11:34:29 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-hackers@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > Are any of you folk actually doing an upgrade from somebody else's > "here's how it ought to be" distribution of ANYTHING directly to > a machine that you care about? Seems to me it would be crazy > to do that :-) I've done a number of Solaris boxes this way, with very good results. > My production machines use NIS maps for amd. I don't expect the > stock /etc/rc and /etc/sysconfig to handle it. The FreeBSD startup > of amd only provides a small subset of the startup possibilities > described in the amd documentation. This is just an example. Well, if the amd stuff was in /etc/rc3.d/S52.amd, you could hack it to your hearts content, and you wouldn't be in danger of it getting overwritten unless the operation of the amd component itself changed (and you should expect it in that case, and still have to confirm). Your AMD maps would live *elsewhere* and not depend on the scripts, except that the scripts and the maps agree to a common data format... > Another exmaple: I don't like the ownership and permissions of > directories and files in the standard distribution. I change it on > production machines. My call, and not under the jurisdiction > of the Permissions Police, eh? This should be part of the install priveledges; with the exception of security fixes and new files (insertion of which can be handled by context diffs and "patch"), that just means you put a "LOCAL" instead of a "DIST" tag on local modifications. This presumes a global database of "should have these permissions", like SCO, Linux, Solaris, et. al., have. > I don't expect the standard FreeBSD distribution to fit my needs > out of the box, or to have Those in Power change it to fit my needs, > I am pleased when it is a reasonable base from which to change. > How would anyone alse know what wierd configuration I might want. How about if "Those in Power" allowed you to data-drive the configuration, and then let you specify the data -- and the *data* was not stomped on an upgrade, but the scripts that act based on that data were? Regards, Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.