Per Jessen said the following on 01/23/2013 02:26 AM:
Anton Aylward wrote:
Carlos E. R. said the following on 01/22/2013 09:45 PM:
El 2013-01-22 a las 14:08 -0300, Cristian Rodríguez escribió:
NO, having configuration files is fine, as long they are parsed or generated directly by the program itself.
I find that a centralized sysconfig directory, with files following the same syntax, and serving as metaconfig for the actual config files is a fine SUSE addition. It is perfect.
I prefer this than having to learn how each program does its own config.
+1
/etc/sysconfig is usually just a bunch of environment variables. I think there _is_ a place for /etc/sysconfig, but it's certainly not for normalizing configuration files and parameters.
/etc/sysconfig is more than just a 'bunch of environment variables'. I'm not sure its even that. I'd call it 'System Settings'. Like *WHAT* DM to use, What Display manager to use Whether or not to run various things. Perhaps part of the confusion is that UNIX broke down the traditional barrier between what was system code and what was an application. In old-speak, things like compilers and the services handled by XINETD were 'system'. In the 70s, UNIX represented a 'microkernel' and 'everything was an application' in the sense that it ran in user space and 'each thing did one thing and only one thing' and the monolithic programs that were the norm on mainframes went away. Well OK, the monoliths have crept back in, noticeable as the long running programs like database servers (the Oracle model rather than the Progress model) and given up on the radical idea that UNIX introduced cheap-to-spawn short lived programs. But I think we still have to draw a boundary between system services and the user applications. Like the SSHD is a system service but ssh is a user application. The configuration for the user - per user - lives in ~/.ssh/ So where does the configuration for SSHD live? In /etc/ssh/ obviously. But that's the configuration for the INNARDS of the server/daemon. And this is where I think what you meant by 'environment' comes in. As I said earlier, there are DECISIONS - is it to be run at all? - chrooted ? things like that. Now it may be that for an implementation some of this 'environment' ends up on the command line like logfile=/var/log/.... but that is beside the point and distracting. Necessary but not the issue. Suppose we want to debug. Maybe its a flag, "-v", "-vvvvv", "-D". Or maybe its to run under 'strace', 'gdb' or similar. I suppose you could call that 'environment' as well. But this is distinct from the settings for the service we would find under /etc/ssh/, /etc/dhcpcd.conf, /etc/postfix/ They serve different functions. And that's apart from the "settings" in /etc/sysconfig/displaymanager which doesn't really correspond to a program. Its about decisions. For example I have an entry there ## Path: Desktop/Display manager ## Description: settings to generate a proper displaymanager config ## Type: string(kdm,kdm3,kdm4,xdm,gdm,wdm,entrance,console) ## Default: "" # # Here you can set the default Display manager (kdm/xdm/gdm/wdm/entrance/console). # all changes in this file require a restart of the displaymanager # DISPLAYMANAGER="lightdm" There are other entries of similar gross function. One says to use Xorg.
But I suspect that Cristian is talking about something else; he seems to have dodged and twisted - or maybe its a language thing. But no, I can't see Postfix generating alias files or master.cf filter configurations.
postfix is actually one of those where none of the config is in sysconfig. It is in /etc/postfix/, only to be parsed by postfix. The only thing you typically pass on the command line is the config-dir.
Postfix is a complex example. Yes Postfix can dump SOME of its internal state, but that's far from what can be setup in /etc/postfix/. I chose Postfix as a poster-boy _because_ it can dump internal state - Cristian raised that. But much of its configuration is way, way beyond that. It may be a bad example; The Suse version of /etc/sysconfig/postfix contains the settigns used by SuSEconfig.postfix to generate teh files in /etc/postfix. Or some of them. Its far from a complete configuration. This is suse-specific, the Mandriva/Magia and Fedora are different, not only because they lack Yast and SuSEconfig.postfix but because they have itnegrated systemd better. In those instances the /etc/sysconfig/postfix is about the DECISION whether or not to chroot postfix. In that sense Cristian is right about the archaism and dependency on SuSEconfig. But that is no reason to get rid of /etc/sysconfig. Sorry, I can't comment on how Ubuntu does things :-)
Do we still ha a limit on how many characters can be on a command line?
Yes.
Which puts the kibosh on the idea and argument about the command line. Lets face it, some of the arguments in this thread are because openSuse is not at the bleeding edge of Linux development as is Fedora. Yes it still carried the gunnysack of history (such as SuSEconfig) and still has to have somewhere to store the settign used when Yast is being used as a configuration manager. Perhaps that's the case where some external program alters the config. This is good and bad. Some of Yast I like and consider a Good Thing(tm) not only for newbies but because sometimes a GUI can be faster than the raft of command line instructions that I'm going to mis-type. But for a lot of things Yast is an 'idiot stick' if you have any experience. "In the beginning was the command line", and so long as you don't have one long enough to typo then its faster and easier. I can't imagine doing a chown/chmod with a GUI :-) Despite all these issues, one of the reasons I like openSuse over and above the other RPM implementations of Linux is that its configuration *is* more visible. Fedora has integrated systemd much further and I had problems with how they started postfix. Whoops! No line in /etc/sysconfig/post saying CHROOT=1 that I could change; in fact they've gotten rid of /etc/sysconfig/postfix. I had to start hacking the systemd files and searching google. Yes, there was a bug report and yes it was eventually fixed, but it wasn't very visible and it wasn't about SYSTEM CONFIGURATION done is a visible and easy to change manner. The problem isn't that /etc/sysconfig is -- There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full. -- Henry Kissinger -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org