On Thu, Oct 08, 1998 at 12:47:09PM -0400, Stephen J. Carpenter wrote: > On Thu, Oct 08, 1998 at 11:48:08AM -0400, Peter S Galbraith wrote: > > > > "Thomas Gebhardt" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > > > the configuration files of all debian packages are located in /etc. > > > That's really fine. > > > > > > But the package manager stores its configuration (access method, > > > list of selected packages, ...) somewhere in /var/lib/dpkg. Why? > > > > Steve Dunham wrote: > > > > > Configuration goes in /etc, state goes in /var. > > > > But the access method is not a state, it's a configuration. > > I would disagree... > In my mind (read; I dn't have a formal definition in front of me) > "State" and "Configuration" have somewhat overlapping definitions. > > My general rule of thinking about it is: > state is an opion within the program which can be changed and > should be remembered next time. > esp something which reasonably could change every time the program > is used (it is concievable I have a CD today...in a month I am FTP > upgrading) > > this is not something which is meant to be changed "by hand" > besides... > the main rational for /var is to allow other partitions to be mounted > read only... > if this were stored in /etc..../etc would HAVE to be mounted read-write
/etc CAN NOT be mounted, in should be part of root filesystem. And root filesystem is mounted read-write. And /etc/mtab definitly is a state but it should be in root partition. But /var/lib/dpkg/info changes only during upgrading the system. /usr must be remounted read-write for that. So maybe it should go to /usr ? And in any case dpkg should check if /usr is mounted read-write before unpacking a package.