Update from my personal hell

[Jerry Feldman]

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On Thu, 13 Nov 2003 01:45:40 -0500
David Kramer <david at thekramers.net> wrote:

> I have preached many a time about the evils of having multiple files
> and/or non-text databases controlling services.  They WILL get out of
> sync (as mine did) and you WILL be screwed.  Another great example of
> this is XFree86.  There are three or four config programs that come
> with it, and not only are there two different copies (NOT
> synchronized) named the same thing in different directories, but on my
> Red Hat 7.3 system, both the command and the config file were named
> XF86Config!
Centralized configuration has been used in both commercial Unix as well
as in Linux. The /etc/sysconfig stuff is really from LSB. 

The advantages of a central configuration is that there is a single
place you can go to configure everything. But, as we both have found
out, the central configuration does not always work the way you want it
to. (In my case, I have never been able to get Sendmail to work
correctly from YaST, and have always placed my changes directly into
/etc/sendmail.cf). David has also documented his opinions on this for
years. My background is from Tru64 Unix, and we had a centralized config
file (/etc/rc.config) for years. X is still controlled from
/etc/X11/XF86Config.

I think that the issue with a centralized system management utility and
database is that it overrides and changes you might make locally. But,
most centralized managers allow you do disable some features. In YaST
you can tell it not to control things. For instance, in the sysconfig
editor, just go under network/WWW/apache and set ENABLE_SYSCONFIG_APACHE
to no. 
- -- 
Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>
Boston Linux and Unix user group
http://www.blu.org PGP key id:C5061EA9
PGP Key fingerprint:053C 73EC 3AC1 5C44 3E14 9245 FB00 3ED5 C506 1EA9
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