From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Mar 1 05:14:56 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0A38E16A4DE for ; Tue, 1 Mar 2005 05:14:56 +0000 (GMT) Received: from smtp810.mail.sc5.yahoo.com (smtp810.mail.sc5.yahoo.com [66.163.170.80]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 16A9443D1D for ; Tue, 1 Mar 2005 05:14:55 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from krinklyfig@spymac.com) Received: from unknown (HELO smogmonster.com) (jtinnin@pacbell.net@64.171.3.242 with login) by smtp810.mail.sc5.yahoo.com with SMTP; 1 Mar 2005 05:14:54 -0000 From: Joshua Tinnin To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org, Clay Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2005 21:14:53 -0800 User-Agent: KMail/1.7.2 References: <006801c51d4b$c95e99a0$be00a8c0@crskayak> <200502281934.27158.krinklyfig@spymac.com> <018201c51e10$294d9ef0$be00a8c0@crskayak> In-Reply-To: <018201c51e10$294d9ef0$be00a8c0@crskayak> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200502282114.53667.krinklyfig@spymac.com> Subject: Re: Can "/etc/rc.conf" be replaced with a symlink? X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 01 Mar 2005 05:14:56 -0000 On Monday 28 February 2005 07:38 pm, "Clay" wrote: > ----- Original Message ----- > From: Joshua Tinnin > Sent: Monday, February 28, 2005 10:34 PM > On Monday 28 February 2005 06:32 pm, "Clay" > wrote: > > ----- Original Message ----- > > From: Joshua Tinnin > > Sent: Monday, February 28, 2005 9:03 PM > > On Monday 28 February 2005 04:55 am, "Clay" > > wrote: > > > I realized what the problem mostly likely was after submitting > > > the question. I do believe that the mount point where I am > > > wanting to have rc.conf located is not yet available when the > > > file is read. Is there a way to have this FS mounted prior to > > > rc.conf being read? Could I maybe place this mount point above > > > the root in fstab? I will give it try when I have time later > > > today. > > > > Perhaps there is a better solution that will eliminate the need to > > deal with this issue. You might consider writing a script that will > > backup the files you want, which you write once and use forever, or > > you can dump the root filesystem (for one) to a backup disk and/or > > a compressed file. This can be done on a regular basis with a cron > > job. I'm not sure what your specific needs are, but there are > > easier ways to do backups. > - > > I could and may eventually write a script. > > > > I am putting together a media server for hosting my CD's as MP3's. > > I am wanting to move as many of system and app config files I > > change through this process to a location on my "data" partition so > > that I won't have to redo them in the event that I rebuild the root > > partition. > > OK, well I'm not terribly familiar with working around the normal > boot process, other than working with various bootloaders. I am not > sure, but it could be a bit tricky. Maybe someone else would know ... > ? - > I changed fstab so that my data partition would supposely mount > before root, moved/symlink'd rc.conf, and rebooted. This did not > allow rc.conf to be found, so doing this did not make it work. I > will leave rc.conf in /etc for now and maybe work on a solution at a > later time. > > Thanks for the responses! No problem ... Just so you know, the "standard practices" and general recommendations on this list are available here: http://www.lemis.com/questions.html I mention this as top-posting is frowned upon here (though I did a quick fix in my responses, doing more than that is a hassle), and using Outlook/Express is problematic, because the quoting is so horrible. Many people on this list are reading email from consoles using Mutt or Pine, and correctly formatted email and threads helps those people a great deal, as well as everyone else. No worries, just FYI, but do try to remember not to top post even if you have to use MS mail clients for whatever reason. By the way, I was thinking about your problem, and symlinking a system file like /etc/rc.conf might be a problem if you don't have it in the root filesystem. If the filesystem where you have that file gets hosed and you can only work from root to recover (which doesn't get hosed as often, as it doesn't require as many writes), you won't have that file available. It might not be such a problem with that specific file, depending on what you have to do to recover, but with something like /etc/fstab it would be. And using mergemaster is the canonical method to deal with possible overwrites of customized system files by installworld, though you can do a standard install and untar a backup later, overwriting just those files with your backups. Is that what you meant by rebuild the root partition? - jt