In short: Symbolic links are absolutely necessary to exclude files from overlayfs.
Long explanation: I use overlayfs to protect my system's root file system. With overlayfs all changes are only in RAM. So any change is only temporary. I want some changes to be persistent. To do that I copy these files to another partition and create a link. For example I want that my system remembers any network connection so I move /etc/NetworkManager/system- connections/ to another partition and create a link to it. The same applies to the home directory or /var/lib/AccountsService/users/. This will exclude these files from overlayfs. This gives me a superfast system that allows me to do almost any experiment. If something goes wrong I just restart it and it's the same as before. Even more, it's almost impossible to infect this system with malware. It also use full disk encryption (including /boot) and runs from usb. It is a highly secure system... I'm pretty sure there are many more use cases that require symbolic links for config files. -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Desktop Packages, which is subscribed to gnome-control-center in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1848940 Title: gnome-control-center does not respect symbolic links Status in gnome-control-center package in Ubuntu: Incomplete Bug description: Configuration files created as symbolic links are overwritten by gnome-control-center. This probably affects any configuration file managed by gnome-control-center. Test case: ---------- 1.) Create symbolic links of the following files sudo mv /etc/default/locale /etc/default/locale.test && sudo ln -s /etc/default/locale.test /etc/default/locale sudo mv /etc/default/keyboard /etc/default/keyboard.test && sudo ln -s /etc/default/keyboard.test /etc/default/keyboard sudo mv /etc/hostname /etc/hostname.test && sudo ln -s /etc/hostname.test /etc/hostname 2.) Change the language, the keyboard layout and the hostname in gnome-control-center. Expected result: The link destination should be overwritten so that the symbolic link is preserved. Actual result: The symbolic link itself is overwritten so that the symbolic link is lost. To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-control-center/+bug/1848940/+subscriptions -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~desktop-packages Post to : [email protected] Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~desktop-packages More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
