Re: config files and includes.
Julian Elischer [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I have just gone through the process of upgrading or installing several hundred machines, and Thst includes altering or editing many config files in /etc. I like the way that rc.conf is handled, in that defaults/rc.comf can be updated and only the local changes live in r.conf. I wish that more files had this capability. For example syslogd.conf or newsyslog.conf are updated between releases but they are also prime candidates for local additions. What would be really cool is if more config files could do 'includes' so that you could have a syslogd.local.conf wher eall your local entries could be. In addition you could make it look in /usr/local/etc/syslogd.conf for loging requirments for packages. Why not making it simple on yourself and use CPP. /etc/defaults/syslog.global.conf: #ifndef SECURITY security.* /nfs/log/security #endif #ifndef MAIL mail.info /nfs/log/maillog #endif /etc/syslog.local.conf: #define SECURITY security.* /var/log/security #include /etc/defaults/syslog.global.conf /etc/rc.d/syslogd (or similar): +# Preprocess syslog.conf +cpp /etc/syslog.local.conf -o /etc/syslog.conf + Unix has *so* many text processing tools, I don't see why we need to bloat daemons with this stuff. Best regards, Mike Barcroft To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-current in the body of the message
Re: config files and includes
What would be really cool is if more config files could do 'includes' so that you could have a syslogd.local.conf wher eall your local entries could be. In addition you could make it look in /usr/local/etc/syslogd.conf for loging requirments for packages. Hmmm... glancing through syslogd.c, it doesn't look like it would be hard to alter it to support multiple -f options. In that case, just add the following to rc.conf (or /etc/rc.d/syslogd, I suppose): if [ -e /etc/syslog.local ] then syslogd_args=$syslogd_args -f /etc/syslog.local fi for f in /usr/local/etc/syslogd.d/* do syslogd_args=$syslogd_args -f $f done This largely removes the need for include handling. It doesn't allow you to override or remove existing entries, though. One approach that preserves backward compatibility would be to allow optional line numbers, with duplicates overriding earlier entries. That requires some non-trivial code changes to support, but it shouldn't be too hard. There's also considerable precedent for using cpp or m4 to preprocess configuration files. Either supports file inclusions, conditionals, etc. It's generally not too hard to support this: it usually just involves replacing fopen() with popen(). Tim Kientzle To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-current in the body of the message
config files and includes.
I have just gone through the process of upgrading or installing several hundred machines, and Thst includes altering or editing many config files in /etc. I like the way that rc.conf is handled, in that defaults/rc.comf can be updated and only the local changes live in r.conf. I wish that more files had this capability. For example syslogd.conf or newsyslog.conf are updated between releases but they are also prime candidates for local additions. What would be really cool is if more config files could do 'includes' so that you could have a syslogd.local.conf wher eall your local entries could be. In addition you could make it look in /usr/local/etc/syslogd.conf for loging requirments for packages. To do this for every config file would be a lot of work. I do wonder however whether there couldn't be some config-file reader library routine that could be used to pre-pass files and do inclusions.. if the interface was very similar to what is usually used (people tend to either use open/read/close or fopen/fscanf (etc). equivalent calls could be made that use a stream of data that is pre-processed to do inclusions etc. That would making retrofitting relatively easy. Programs that use yacc/lex ar emore difficult, but I haven't looked into it.. anyhow, that was just a thought. To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-current in the body of the message
config files and includes.
On Thu, 20 Feb 2003 18:39:33 -0800 (PST), Julian Elischer [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: What would be really cool is if more config files could do 'includes' so that you could have a syslogd.local.conf wher eall your local entries could be. In addition you could make it look in /usr/local/etc/syslogd.conf for loging requirments for packages. Well, it's a trivial part of XML but the syntax is twisted. The problem is that, particularly in the case of something like syslog.conf, you need to change the defaults, not just supplement them. Right now syslog has no concept of this (and changing the notation doesn't help without a complete rethink of the syslog.conf semantics). Worthwhile, but a lot of work for which nobody will be grateful (instead they will all complain that you changed the format of the file). -GAWollman To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-current in the body of the message
Re: config files and includes.
- Julian Elischer's Original Message -
I have just gone through the process of upgrading or installing several
hundred machines, and Thst includes altering or editing many config
files in /etc. I like the way that rc.conf
is handled, in that defaults/rc.comf can be updated and only the
local changes live in r.conf. I wish that more files had this
capability.
This is not exactly what you are asking for, but this is from
a petty much a been-there/done-that many years ago. Typing in
the logic from memory:
rcfiles=/etc/inetd.conf /etc/syslog.conf /etc/newsyslog.conf
for rcf in $rcfiles; do
if [ -f ${rcf}.local ]; then
if [ ! -f ${rcf}.base ]; then
if diff ${rcf} ${rcf}.base /dev/null; then
cp -p ${rcf} ${rcf}.base
fi
fi
cat ${rcf}.base ${rcf}.local ${rcf}
fi
done
I think you can get the idea.
-John
For example syslogd.conf or newsyslog.conf are updated between releases
but they are also prime candidates for local additions.
What would be really cool is if more config files could
do 'includes' so that you could have a syslogd.local.conf
wher eall your local entries could be. In addition you could make it
look in /usr/local/etc/syslogd.conf for loging requirments for
packages.
To do this for every config file would be a lot of work. I do wonder
however whether there couldn't be some config-file reader library
routine that could be used to pre-pass files and do inclusions..
if the interface was very similar to what is usually used
(people tend to either use open/read/close or
fopen/fscanf (etc).
equivalent calls could be made that use a stream of data that is
pre-processed to do inclusions etc. That would making retrofitting
relatively easy. Programs that use yacc/lex ar emore difficult,
but I haven't looked into it..
anyhow, that was just a thought.
To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
with unsubscribe freebsd-current in the body of the message
--
--
As said by Napolean Bonaparte:
Never ascribe to malice, that which is adequately explained by incompetence
After being embraced by MS:
When accused of malice, always hide behind incompetence.
To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Re: config files and includes.
On Thu, 20 Feb 2003, Garrett Wollman wrote: On Thu, 20 Feb 2003 18:39:33 -0800 (PST), Julian Elischer [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: What would be really cool is if more config files could do 'includes' so that you could have a syslogd.local.conf wher eall your local entries could be. In addition you could make it look in /usr/local/etc/syslogd.conf for loging requirments for packages. Well, it's a trivial part of XML but the syntax is twisted. The problem is that, particularly in the case of something like syslog.conf, you need to change the defaults, not just supplement them. Right now syslog has no concept of this (and changing the notation doesn't help without a complete rethink of the syslog.conf semantics). Worthwhile, but a lot of work for which nobody will be grateful (instead they will all complain that you changed the format of the file). of course.. New functionality vs POLA. An age old conflict. To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-current in the body of the message
Re: config files and includes.
On Thu, 20 Feb 2003, John De Boskey wrote:
- Julian Elischer's Original Message -
I have just gone through the process of upgrading or installing several
hundred machines, and Thst includes altering or editing many config
files in /etc. I like the way that rc.conf
is handled, in that defaults/rc.comf can be updated and only the
local changes live in r.conf. I wish that more files had this
capability.
This is not exactly what you are asking for, but this is from
a petty much a been-there/done-that many years ago. Typing in
the logic from memory:
rcfiles=/etc/inetd.conf /etc/syslog.conf /etc/newsyslog.conf
for rcf in $rcfiles; do
if [ -f ${rcf}.local ]; then
if [ ! -f ${rcf}.base ]; then
if diff ${rcf} ${rcf}.base /dev/null; then
cp -p ${rcf} ${rcf}.base
fi
fi
cat ${rcf}.base ${rcf}.local ${rcf}
fi
done
I think you can get the idea.
yeah but we don't distribute our files like that..
you get a new syslogd.conf when you upgrade, not a syslogd.conf.base
(unfortunartly)
I considered this possibilty. especially as many daemons etc.
have an argument that they can take for a config file, and the argument
is often changeable from rc.conf.
e.g.
. /usr/local/concatfiles
syslogd_flags=-s -f/etc/syslogd.local
[...]
where
/usr/local/concatfiles does:
cat /etc/syslogd.conf /usr/local/etc/syslogd.conf /etc/syslogd.local
or in some cases:
if ! grep -q already patched etc/login.conf.diff
patch /usr/local/etc/login.conf.diff
Unfortunatly each case requires a seprate aproach.
julian
-John
For example syslogd.conf or newsyslog.conf are updated between releases
but they are also prime candidates for local additions.
What would be really cool is if more config files could
do 'includes' so that you could have a syslogd.local.conf
wher eall your local entries could be. In addition you could make it
look in /usr/local/etc/syslogd.conf for loging requirments for
packages.
To do this for every config file would be a lot of work. I do wonder
however whether there couldn't be some config-file reader library
routine that could be used to pre-pass files and do inclusions..
if the interface was very similar to what is usually used
(people tend to either use open/read/close or
fopen/fscanf (etc).
equivalent calls could be made that use a stream of data that is
pre-processed to do inclusions etc. That would making retrofitting
relatively easy. Programs that use yacc/lex ar emore difficult,
but I haven't looked into it..
anyhow, that was just a thought.
To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
with unsubscribe freebsd-current in the body of the message
--
--
As said by Napolean Bonaparte:
Never ascribe to malice, that which is adequately explained by incompetence
After being embraced by MS:
When accused of malice, always hide behind incompetence.
To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
with unsubscribe freebsd-current in the body of the message
Re: config files and includes.
On Thu, 20 Feb 2003, Garrett Wollman wrote: On Thu, 20 Feb 2003 18:39:33 -0800 (PST), Julian Elischer [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: What would be really cool is if more config files could do 'includes' so that you could have a syslogd.local.conf wher eall your local entries could be. In addition you could make it look in /usr/local/etc/syslogd.conf for loging requirments for packages. Well, it's a trivial part of XML but the syntax is twisted. The problem is that, particularly in the case of something like syslog.conf, you need to change the defaults, not just supplement them. Right now syslog has no concept of this (and changing the notation doesn't help without a complete rethink of the syslog.conf semantics). Worthwhile, but a lot of work for which nobody will be grateful (instead they will all complain that you changed the format of the file). of course.. New functionality vs POLA. An age old conflict. Isn't POLA the reason why people gave up trying to extend the old standards (like syslogd and inetd) and decided to build new feature-rich daemons like msyslog and xinetd? -- Matt Emmerton To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-current in the body of the message
Re: config files and includes.
At 6:39 PM -0800 2/20/03, Julian Elischer wrote: I have just gone through the process of upgrading or installing several hundred machines, and that includes altering or editing many config files in /etc. ... For example syslogd.conf or newsyslog.conf are updated between releases but they are also prime candidates for local additions. Note that I'm in the middle of some newsyslog changes, so I'm willing to think about it from that side of things. And Wes has some syslogd changes coming, so maybe he'll be interested. What would be really cool is if more config files could do 'includes' so that you could have a syslogd.local.conf where all your local entries could be. [...] To do this for every config file would be a lot of work. I do wonder however whether there couldn't be some config-file reader library routine that could be used to pre-pass files and do inclusions.. I've thought about this a little, and I felt it was tricky to get right. Sometimes you want to just add a line, sometimes you want to delete one line and add a different one, and sometimes you need to modify the line (ie, remove lpd-errs from a line in syslog.conf, but do not disturb whatever else is on the same line). I think you'd pretty much need to go to a new format for all the config files, and that's too big of a change (IMO) to quickly do. There's also the question of overhead. Why do all of this processing every time newsyslog runs, instead of doing it once as a part of mergemaster? So, I was thinking of writing some addition to mergemaster which could handle this. Then it's just a matter of writing one program that knows how to massage config files, without having to understand the specifics of any particular config file. Something like: if there is a line: /var/log/lpd-errs in: /etc/newsyslog.conf then: change '644 7' to '644 12' This strikes me as pretty simple (at least for the changes I want to propagate). It's just a change to mergemaster, which could then be MFC'ed to any release. That was my thinking on it. I don't know how well it would scale up for hundreds of machines though. [...] In addition you could make it look in /usr/local/etc/syslogd.conf for logging requirements for packages. However, I hadn't been thinking about this part. Certainly it would be nice to have something that also handled these issues. I've futzed around some with some of the uber-flexible config options on redhat, and I can see how that would be helpful. -- Garance Alistair Drosehn= [EMAIL PROTECTED] Senior Systems Programmer or [EMAIL PROTECTED] Rensselaer Polytechnic Instituteor [EMAIL PROTECTED] To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-current in the body of the message
Re: config files and includes.
Matthew Emmerton wrote: On Thu, 20 Feb 2003, Garrett Wollman wrote: of course.. New functionality vs POLA. An age old conflict. Isn't POLA the reason why people gave up trying to extend the old standards (like syslogd and inetd) and decided to build new feature-rich daemons like msyslog and xinetd? People apparently keep confusing POLA with PONA -- the Principle Of No Astonishment. The purpose of POLA is to suppress unnecessary changes, not suppress necessary changes. -- Terry To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-current in the body of the message
