Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Sat, 23 Apr 2011 16:40:21 -0400
From:      "illoai@gmail.com" <illoai@gmail.com>
To:        Chris Telting <christopher-ml@telting.org>
Cc:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: zfs partition for /etc?
Message-ID:  <BANLkTik2N0DTL-Eo4HC0EB_%2BvEy=eBcGLw@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <4DB30596.3030609@telting.org>
References:  <4DB30596.3030609@telting.org>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On 23 April 2011 13:00, Chris Telting <christopher-ml@telting.org> 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
--



Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?BANLkTik2N0DTL-Eo4HC0EB_%2BvEy=eBcGLw>