There's little data and very few binaries in /etc, which makes it easy to "grep -r" for values. Unfortunately, apache2 does not only link its modules into /etc, but also the whole /usr/lib, and that is easily 100x more data to search than /etc proper. There are obvious work-arounds for users, but it seems to me that having apache2 without those symlinks (at least without the /usr/lib one) would be the best solution. AFAIK the only other package with symlinks to binaries in /etc is X which has a) less than half a dozen of them and b) some historical precedent to begin with. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. 2. 3.
other packages do it too ;)
> other packages do it too ;) Then they're broken as well. FWIW I have over 650 packages installed, and apache2 is the only one doing this (with the the exception of X as noted above). $ du -msL /etc/*|sort -n|tail -5 du: `/etc/apache2/lib/X11/mwm': No such file or directory 1 /etc/xpdfrc 1 /etc/zsh 6 /etc/X11 10 /etc/gconf 2391 /etc/apache2 The apache2 links don't fly with FHS, it seems, nor with common practice. They make /etc backups harder (especially if any other package has its _configuration_ files symlinked elsewhere), and they make searching /etc a pain as well. I am more convinced than ever that this should be fixed.
hmm, ok so you dont like the layout. i dont really have a problem with changing it all, if it irks you that much. nobody has really complained about it before though. problem is a lot of snippets in the portage tree will need changing. not a terribly big deal, just pretty tiresome to "fix" it all. but about your backup issue -- your backup program doest grok symbolic links? i'll agree grep -R in /etc could be irritating however.
> but about your backup issue -- your backup program doest grok symbolic > links? The backup program either follows sym link, or it doesn't. So if any package has its config files outside /etc (but symlinked from there), you have one of three choices: - /usr/lib becomes part of your backup - the symlinked config files are not in the backup - you tell the backup program which symlinks (not) to follow > i'll agree grep -R in /etc could be irritating however. Makes me wonder what others do to find all places where a particular string could be coming from :-). Obviously, this is not urgent, but I strongly recommend changing it. I don't know any other distro that puts serverroot into /etc, and the apache default doesn't do that, either. I'm not sure if "No binaries may be located under /etc." includes symlinked directories, but if it does, then we're also in violation of FHS 2.2 (3.7.2). In fact this is so inconsistent with other distros and other Gentoo server packages that I'm curious what the thinking behind this configuration was, because there's certainly been a reason for it.
> In fact this is so inconsistent with other distros and other Gentoo > server packages that I'm curious what the thinking behind this No, I'm afraid that's where you havent done your homework. Look at Mandrake's Apache2 package. This is where I've taken many nice ideas from. In Apache1 I needed to add a serverroot patch but now in Apache2 I dont, presumably ASF added this support natively. You might also look at advx.org, jmdault I believe is mostly behind that and the Mandrake Apache stuff -- a very popular webserver indeed. I believe the main motivation is being able to fairly flexibly put together several webserver instances, with as little reconfiguration and re-installation headaches as possible. Shorter configration file snip, etc... I'm glad you agree it's not terrbly urgent because I'm not terribly keen on changing it all around either :-)
im staying with this config for now. lets see where we get with the upcoming *-config tools and perhaps it'll get changed around to "deal" with this.
