Date: Thu, 14 Jan 1999 16:12:01 -0500 (EST) From: Alan Bawden <Alan@LCS.MIT.EDU> To: FreeBSD-gnats-submit@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: misc/9496: I suggest a better warning for /etc/rc.conf Message-ID: <14Jan1999.151125.Alan@LCS.MIT.EDU>
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>Number: 9496 >Category: misc >Synopsis: I suggest a better warning for /etc/rc.conf >Confidential: no >Severity: non-critical >Priority: low >Responsible: freebsd-bugs >State: open >Quarter: >Keywords: >Date-Required: >Class: change-request >Submitter-Id: current-users >Arrival-Date: Thu Jan 14 13:20:00 PST 1999 >Closed-Date: >Last-Modified: >Originator: Alan Bawden >Release: FreeBSD 2.2.6-RELEASE i386 >Organization: ITS Preservation Society >Environment: FreeBSD 2.2.6-RELEASE i386 >Description: The comment at the front of /etc/rc.conf does not explain that the file is actually read and re-written by /stand/sysinstall. >How-To-Repeat: Install FreeBSD, then decide to edit some customizations into /etc/rc.conf. As you start to edit, you will notice a comment that says: # All arguments must be in double or single quotes. Notice that, while this does give you a little twinge that you might not understand everything going on here, it does not actually deter you from writing all kinds of things that sysinstall won't be able to parse. >Fix: I would replace the comment as follows: # This file is sometimes parsed and re-written by # /stand/sysinstall. Because of this, all values must be written # surrounded by double quotes, and there is no way to specify a # value that contains a double quote. If this rules out # something that you want to do, put your hack in # /etc/rc.conf.local -- sysinstall doesn't look there. I removed the reference to single quotes, because my reading of sysinstall suggests that they don't actually work. I.e., you might be tempted to write foo='bar"baz' thinking you had found a way to specify a value containing a double quote, but the first time sysinstall processes this, it will write out: foo="bar"baz" Which will be mis-parsed by -both- sh and sysinstall. >Release-Note: >Audit-Trail: >Unformatted: To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-bugs" in the body of the message
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