On Wed, 5 May 2021 David Wright wrote: [dd]
One thing I didn't learn is why .pwd.lock is in /etc/ rather than, say, /run/lock/. Perhaps related, why are there dotfiles in /etc/ anyway. (.git/, .java/, .etckeeper, .gitignore are the others.) What are they hiding from?
[dd] I would assume that they are "hidden" because they are merely peripheral or auxiliary to the *purpose* of the directory containing them. We tend to group files into directories devoted to one function or another. This certainly seems to be the unstated premise of hier(7), for example. So home directories hold a user's content. Per-user configuration falls outside that canonical function, hence the ~/.dotfile convention in home directories. Likewise, I assume that files under /etc are text files that determine system configuration, and that if system configuration is something I care about, then I ought to at least gain a passing familiarity with each such file under /etc, ideally (eventually) become familiar with its content and function, and generally consider myself responsible for the conseqences of that content, take responsiblity for reviewing and editing it, etc. To that end, I can occasionally do something like $ ls -Rp | less and make a point of examining the first couple of things that look unfamiliar. This misses out dotfiles. But with a few exceptions --which seem to prove the rule after all-- this omission serves my purposes just fine. That is, when I understand the purpose of the file hierarchy then I know where to look to find what I want, and I'm spared the trouble of ignoring certain files whose presence is helpful-yet-peripheral to the purpose of a given directory. So when I look for what I'm missing out on, and do... $ shopt -s globstar $ ls /etc/**/.[^.]* ...then I find * /etc/.pwd.lock, clearly an exception to the /etc profile above * various ".placeholder" files, also clear exceptions * model (eponymous) home directory config files under /etc/skel * some ".depends.*" files in /etc/init.d/ which are not init scripts I don't have under /etc any of .git/, .gitignore, .etckeeper, .java/. But don't they contain mere meta-info, relative to the primary purpose of the directory containing them? (I don't know a thing about .java/ btw, so am curious.) If I put say /etc/default/ under revision control, I would not want new meta-files appearing whenever I did "ls /etc/default". -- Ce qui est important est rarement urgent et ce qui est urgent est rarement important -- Dwight David Eisenhower
