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> On a fresh install of BSD/Linux I'd love to see an empty /etc directory sans any necessary overrides to make it boot. And I rather have a full set of configu
by jlg23 6y ago
> On a fresh install of BSD/Linux I'd love to see an empty /etc directory sans any necessary overrides to make it boot.
And I rather have a full set of configuration files that specifies the defaults at the time of the installation so my system even boots after an update in which some program changed its hardcoded defaults.
> Makes backing up that directory a lot easier too.
I don't really understand what the problem with backing up 0.1 or 1.0MB is.
- zaarn 6y agoWell, the specified defaults are in a folder in /lib or /usr. You can find them there and copy them to /etc or just write what you change. The issue is not how much is backed up but what. If /etc only represents changes to system defaults, then the backup represents a list of my changes and it's always easily visible from each full snapshot what changes were active in the system at that time. If /etc contains all configuration, then from a single backup snapshot, you cannot determine what changes where made to the system. This would be an issue if you're trying to recover the backup to a freshly installed system, for example, because you cannot tell what changes you have made vs what changes occured in the backup due to updates or upstream due to updates since the backup. It's a semantic difference that can make restoring backups easier and replicable across different systems.
- jlg23 6y agoa) Not all programs can read multiple configuration files. It's either in the one configuration file or a hardcoded default. b) Not all settings done in defaults can be simply undone later on (e.g.: apache's httpd.conf, IIRC the same for nginx - good luck getting this default listener down again) c) If you want to infer which changes were made by you or by the system's update procedures, explicitly creating snapshots before every manual or automatic modifications would be the way to go. Preferably one after each as well, so you have something to verify the integrity of a system against in case of security issues.
- zaarn 6y agoa) and b) are just issues with common software being idiotic about configuration and insisting one a "one truth" central config file. c) As mentioned above, inferring changes requires two snapshots, if /etc only contains changes a single snapshot allows me to infer changes. And I can verify the integrity just as well using an "after" snapshot. Just means one less snapshot is involved, which is reduced complexity.