Date: Fri, 09 Nov 2012 18:53:45 -0500 From: Greg Troxel <g...@ir.bbn.com>
FWIW, I agree with the notion that defaults should be at a path that is ~always in root; it's normal to have /var in a separate fileystem (at least for old-school UNIX types; I realize the kids these days think there should be one whole-disk fs as /). It has always made me a trifle nervous that there are various things such as dhcp clients touching /etc/rc.conf that require / to be mounted writably. I wonder whether there is some way we could nicely separate the static essentials of / from the dynamic stuff like /etc/rc.conf and the boot entropy, in order to keep /, including the executables of /bin &c. and the bulk of the system configuration, read-only. I suppose a symlink farm pointing into /var might help /etc/rc.conf and other dynamic parts of the system configuration, provided that /var get mounted early enough, but that wouldn't help the boot loader to find entropy in the /var partition.
