[Freedombox-discuss] don't sidestep /etc as configuration storage

[Simo]

On Sun, 2013-11-03 at 18:54 +0100, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
> Quoting Simo (2013-11-03 18:02:56)
> > On Sun, 2013-11-03 at 13:38 +0100, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
> > > Quoting Petter Reinholdtsen (2013-11-03 09:49:24)
> > > > In addition, we get a central and structured place to store 
> > > > configuration for at least some of the services, but that is of 
> > > > less importance to me.
> > > 
> > > It is of *big* importance to me that we do *not* move storage from 
> > > /etc to a database: It may seem tempting to use that approach when 
> > > needing a setup different from what the corresponding package 
> > > maintainer offers, but since we have *no* administrator on our 
> > > systems, our setup *must* be supported by package maintainers.
> > 
> > I am not sure what this means, package maintainers normally call 
> > adduser/addgroup or similar, how is that a problem ?
> 
> LDAP is a registry.  Slapd supports using its own database to configure 
> itself, and some other applications also support storing configuration 
> in LDAP as alternative to files below /etc.
> 
> Debian packages generally store site-wide configuration as files below 
> /etc.  That means the maintainers of packages ensure that configurations 
> work and can be smoothly upgraded across releases of those packages.
> 
> It is technically possible to avoid coordinating needs for customization 
> of configuration with package maintainers, by using another registry 
> than files below /etc - e.g. by use of the LDAP registry.
> 
> That's bad! Debian packages is all about maintenance.  Sidestepping that 
> is sidestepping the reliability of Debian.

To be honest I do not have that great faith about maintenance of Debian
packages, especially across releases. In my limited use I've had way too
many breakages of service due to Debian's "helpful" policy of meddling
in package configuration.
The last horror story was an upgrade of a system with dovecot, I was so
upset I nuked Debian and went back to CentOS.

Simo.