From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Sat Apr 23 20:40:22 2011 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id EFAE5106564A for ; Sat, 23 Apr 2011 20:40:22 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from illoai@gmail.com) Received: from mail-fx0-f54.google.com (mail-fx0-f54.google.com [209.85.161.54]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 813988FC12 for ; Sat, 23 Apr 2011 20:40:22 +0000 (UTC) Received: by fxm11 with SMTP id 11so1250664fxm.13 for ; Sat, 23 Apr 2011 13:40:21 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=domainkey-signature:mime-version:in-reply-to:references:date :message-id:subject:from:to:cc:content-type :content-transfer-encoding; bh=trYsJNs7D2yaH6YDjmZkYEm21hrfGBx5EO2DHTJi4yc=; b=icGQB1kL+hsEMPR1BhIFSMj2e1m20GlGt3X8l/vapa2A0tDbj0QqGAPu0sUXVufxPQ HUtFjFI2IcMDF3bIDnbfIckX4dIwhC9A/Oow4r9pSyV4WMBdL9H8XUNP5SJrJF20ebjj UBCvQybEStknpbFc5liRLuIzlG6NGzDt/mjQM= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=mime-version:in-reply-to:references:date:message-id:subject:from:to :cc:content-type:content-transfer-encoding; b=l1A4A4U1D/Hgz1XjxkQp+LnVQ+Tmiv9EVuZBJv/dOO/hlErQJtpbIHpF2IXDeRUbQm LtOMfLXyCnme2KeU2JHfEyzpPAXwInOdL5m69sbLhhnvfsc5QyohWowBEFxbg6Kj9BNZ wWJ5cY3mDDaTvrvyPHYSmqj2IbXmUnyyMatXA= MIME-Version: 1.0 Received: by 10.223.77.16 with SMTP id e16mr2685001fak.87.1303591221434; Sat, 23 Apr 2011 13:40:21 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.223.74.201 with HTTP; Sat, 23 Apr 2011 13:40:21 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: <4DB30596.3030609@telting.org> References: <4DB30596.3030609@telting.org> Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2011 16:40:21 -0400 Message-ID: From: "illoai@gmail.com" To: Chris Telting Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: zfs partition for /etc? X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2011 20:40:23 -0000 On 23 April 2011 13:00, Chris Telting wrote: > I'm using PC-BSD and ZFS. =A0ZFS is outstanding. =A0Somewhat less impress= ed with > PCBSD. . . . > So so on to my question. =A0I'm sure others have thought about this. =A0I= kind > of want /etc to be it's own zfs partition so that I can snapshot it separ= ate > from everything else and preserve it without much effort. =A0But I don't = think > I can do that because of booting. =A0The system depends on /etc before it > mounts it's first file system. =A0Same issue I experienced a couple years= back > when I tried to do unionfs on /etc. Is it possible to mount multiple > partitions from the kernel read only for single user mode and bootup? I > almost feel like there should be an fstab for /boot just to be able to do > something like this. > > I want to be able to snapshot and rollback my base system in seconds. =A0= Since > I use separate volumes for /usr and /var I'll accept using a script. =A0M= y > only thought is to generate and archive diffs for /etc though another > modular script to match snapshot labels. I'm not sure why /etc applies any differently than rolling back or snapshotting all of /, of course I don't know anything about your installation, but /etc might run to 1.3M on a really bad day. I also don't change /etc but rarely, maybe once a year, outside of occasionally fiddling allscreens_flags in /etc/rc.conf. The pain and potential for breakage seems hardly worth the benefits, to me. (as an aside, I think most of the configuration business in /boot , specifically loader.conf, could simply be moved to /etc, but it's not a problem I'd bother to fix. It's an order of magnitude less irritating than the spaghetti in most any linux machine's /etc q.v.) --=20 --