[Thinstation-general] The structure of ts.conf.buildtime

[Mike E. <km...@ma...>]

Miles and I recently had a private e-mail exchange on something else, that 
ended up being an discussion on the structure of 
thinstation.conf.buildtime ("buildtime"). We've decided to start it again 
here publically to get your opinion.

Miles obviously wants buildtime to be as it is (otherwise he'd changed it already :-)

I want to change buildtime to be as ts.conf.example. e.g. with the 
complete setup, which is perfectly possible as things are now. No code has to be changed.

My arguments are:

For boot from local devices you really need a complete buildtime, not just 
the cut down version with network settings only. OK, if you boot from a RW 
device, you may get around the problem by using a ts.conf.user, but for a 
CD there is no way you can avoid putting everything in buildtime as it is 
RO. Even with loadlin on a RW device a ts.conf.user is impossible due to 
the DOS 8.3 file name convention (and I guess the same goes for syslinux, but I never tried).

Also it makes a lot of sense to me to build any image with useful 
defaults, so things can fail gracefully.
 
Since all the ts.conf(.buildtime, .network, .user, .group-<name>, -<name>, 
-<ip>, -<mac>) really are identical in structure, I think that having an 
apparently different buildtime file is confusing.

Comments?

Mike
-- 
Thinstation FAQ maintainer
http://thinstation.sourceforge.net
- a light, full featured linux based thin client OS