"Chatty" config files in /etc

[Ruslan Ermilov]

On Wed, Aug 30, 2006 at 08:42:19PM -0400, Garance A Drosehn wrote:
> On Aug 30/06, Tom Rhodes asks the reasonable question:
> >On Thu, 31 Aug 2006 00:28:34 +0400
> >Ruslan Ermilov <ru at FreeBSD.org> wrote:
> >
> > > On Wed, Aug 30, 2006 at 01:41:51PM -0400, Garance A Drosehn wrote:
> > > >
> >> > I do think those comments and examples are useful, but it might be
> > > > better to move those lines into separate files.
> > >
> > > I think they should be moved to /usr/share/examples/etc/ (like
> >> make.conf), with files in /etc/ representing good (short) defaults
> > > with a minimum of comments and probably references to examples.
> >
> >Question is, what files will be moved?  All configuration files
> >or just "some" ?
> 
> I would not move "all" of them.  I think the proper rule would be
> "Split up the ones which constantly annoy me when they change".
> Obviously that's a rather subjective criteria...
> 
> We could pick off a few and change those, and then see if there
> are anymore which should be split up.  My list would be:
>     /etc/hosts
>     /etc/hosts.allow
>     /etc/pf.conf
>     /etc/printcap
> 
I'd rather start from moving TRUE example files, that are
relatively large (for a quick eye inspection), including
all of the files you mentioned.  I'd remove /etc/hosts.allow
completely since it looks (from code inspection) that
doing two non-existence checks (for hosts.allow and hosts.deny)
will faster result in granting access than having a one
line in hosts.allow that allows everything but requires
additional read(2) syscalls and parsing.  I'd replace the
default /etc/hosts with:

127.0.0.1	localhost
::1		localhost


Cheers,
-- 
Ruslan Ermilov
ru at FreeBSD.org
FreeBSD committer
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