[arch-dev-public] [ANNOUNCE] initscripts-2012.07.3

[Ionut Biru]

On 07/21/2012 12:51 PM, Tom Gundersen wrote:
> On Sat, Jul 21, 2012 at 8:48 AM, Evangelos Foutras
> <evangelos at foutrelis.com> wrote:
>> I find removing most of the variables to be confusing and would
>> suggest that [1] and [2] get reverted.
> 
> I'm not going to revert them outright, but we can discuss individual
> options (some clearly must go, others are a matter of taste).
> 
>> My counterargument is the nonexistence, in the previous rc.conf, of
>> default options that would need to be changed in a way that is
>> transparent to the user.
> 
> I guess I should have pointed out that I'd like a way to update the
> comments about each of the options frequently (mainly to add warnings
> or explanations as we realise them), but when the comments were in
> rc.conf that would create .pacnew files, which is annoying. I'd also
> like new users to have to read the manpage before they decide to use
> any of the discouraged options, so they will at least know the
> alternatives.
> 
>> Moreover, stuff like TIMEZONE, LOCALE and MODULES should be included
>> in rc.conf; nobody really wants to run their system with the default
>> LOCALE=C, and quite a few people will want to load extra modules (in
>> my case vboxnetflt), without messing around with other files
>> (/etc/locale.conf) or adding variables back into rc.conf,
>> respectively.
> 
> I agree that most people would want to configure /etc/locale.conf and
> /etc/vconsole.conf (or their equivalents in /etc/rc.conf). This is a
> matter of taste, but I'd really rather we start only using the two
> former files for this purpose. A benefit I did not mention yet is that
> they allow a lot more options than what rc.conf ever did.
> 
> As to modules: This should really not me necessary these days, and in
> the cases it is, it is something we should consider fixing. With
> kernel 3.5 the last of the mainline modules that I'm aware of (kvm) no
> longer needs to be specified manually.
> 
> In the case of virtualbox, I think the simplest solution here would be
> to load the needed modules whenever virtualbox is installed. I.e.,
> ship a file with the virtualbox package
> (/usr/lib/modules-load.d/virtualbox.conf) containing
> 
> vboxnetadp
> vboxnetflt
> 
> (and whatever else is needed)
> 
>> In conclusion, a) the existing rc.conf is already stripped down to the
>> essential system configuration options, b) I like having a default
>> structure of these options in rc.conf instead of adding them back in
>> at random places (in rc.conf), c) if we want to shift the task of
>> configuring the hostname/locale/keymap/etc to external files, it might
>> be preferable to remove them completely from rc.conf instead of having
>> multiple points of truth.
> 
> a) this is not the case. The current rc.conf contains several
> redundant and at least one harmful setting (HARDWARECLOCK).
> 
> b) fair enough, though does not seem like a major issue.
> 
> c) I'd like to do this in the long-run, but we can't just rip out the
> old support over night (see the old network settings or the crypttab
> changes for how I'd like these things to be done).
> 
>> (The above is my view on this change after spending 10 minutes trying
>> to figure out how I can load modules through /etc/modprobe.d, after I
>> noticed that MODULES was removed from rc.conf. In my defense, I
>> thought it could be similar to the time MOD_BLACKLIST was dropped. :p)
> 
> rc.conf(5) points to modules-load.d(5)[0].
> 
> -t
> 
> [0]: <http://0pointer.de/public/systemd-man/modules-load.d.html>
> 

I pretty much hate everything you have described here.
We started from a simple and elegant, single file configuration to over
9k(not to mention that i have no freaking idea which one to edit)

Bring back the old rc.conf until we are switching to systemd or even
better, kill initscripts right now and lets move to systemd.

I don't like the transition, we are in the middle and it's frustrating.

-- 
Ionuț

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