Bug#40766: PROPOSED] Rewrite of "Configuration files" section

[Julian Gilbey <J.D.Gilbey@qmw.ac.uk>]

> if that behavior is useful. Examples? Well, I don't really think of
> the /etc/init.d startup scripts as configuration files in any purest
> sense; they are more acurately described as "scripts subject to local
> modification" (which I personally would prefer be modified to store the
> configuration data (including whether or not the daemon was actually to
> be started) somewhere else, leaving the actual init script unmodified).

See my other email on /etc/init.d files.  Maybe defining configuration
files to include the case of "scripts intended to be subject to
possible local modification" would help?

> I'm against saying that "every conffile is a configuration file" simply
> because I don't want to lock out some other legitimate use of the
> conffile mechanism.

The very nature of the conffile mechanism seems to be to protect the
sysadmin from losing locally configurations.  Having a conffile which
does not have this purpose seems silly, at least at this point.  If we
allow for this possibility, then we should at least take care to
clarify what happens to conffiles in the later sections of the changed
text.  (Can't remember which para off-hand....)

   Julian

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  Julian Gilbey, Dept of Maths, QMW, Univ. of London. J.D.Gilbey@qmw.ac.uk
        Debian GNU/Linux Developer,  see http://www.debian.org/~jdg