[systemd-devel] CoreOS Goal Question: Should we be aiming to be able to boot with an empty /etc?

[Lennart Poettering]

On Mon, 07.01.13 11:48, Colin Guthrie (gmane at colin.guthr.ie) wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> Just thinking outload here as dealing with some packages where stuff in
> /etc was marked in the spec as %config and it really shouldn't be (I'm
> thinking dbus policy files and rootcerts mainly but there are do doubt
> countless other examples where this is true also).
> 
> I was thinking, is it a general stated aim that we should be able to
> boot with an empty /etc? I know this isn't true today, but with
> appropriate effort is that where we should be aiming?
> 
> I guess the same should be true of /var too probably (i.e. packages
> should be able to cope with initing themselves on first use and not rely
> on doing it at package install).

The stuff we design in systemd should work fine with an empty /etc. And
I think it would be a nice goal to achieve this for the whole
platform. That said, it's kinda unrealistic to achieve that anytime
soon.

On Android you can drop the configuration partition to do a "firmware
reset" and we should really try to implement something similar with our
/etc.

There's a currently a lot of stuff in /etc though that really doesn't
belong there. For example databases such as /etc/services or
/etc/protocols really should live in /usr/share or so. It's fine
allowing people to override these databases in /etc, but the upstream
databse should not be considered primary configuration that should live
in /etc.

Lennart

-- 
Lennart Poettering - Red Hat, Inc.