Re: [gentoo-user] Re: systemd? [ Was: The End Is Near ... ]

[Michael Mol <mikemol@gmail.com>]

On Mon, Mar 19, 2012 at 9:33 AM, Neil Bothwick <neil@digimed.co.uk> wrote:
> On Sun, 18 Mar 2012 02:49:56 -0600, Canek Peláez Valdés wrote:
>
>> > They ensure that there is an sshd configuration file and
>> > give a meaningful message (including where to find the sample) if it
>> > is not present, and check for the presence of the hostkeys (again
>> > which are needed) and create them if they are not present. Your 9
>> > lines of sshd.service do none of this.
>>
>> That is completely true. I also think that those checks does not
>> belong into the init script: I think the configuration file presence
>> should be guarantee by the package manager at install time, and so the
>> creation of the hostkeys.
>
> sshd is a bit of a special case. Think like CDs, like SystemRescueCD. If
> the keys were created at installation time, every CD would have the same
> keys, which is not particularly desirable.

I prefer "counterexample" to "special case" ... I don't like calling
things "special cases" because it suggests that they're somehow more
privileged than anything else, and unnecessarily weighs against
software which hasn't been written yet.

A similar case which falls into the same kind of circumstance:
per-host IDs in mass-deployment scenarios. You see this in large
arrays of similar systems; 'sbc-a3d6' 'sbc-a3d9' 'sbc-7721' ... Heck,
applying something like that to live installation media would be nice;
not having every new install called simply 'gentoo' by default would
be very helpful in installfest scenarios. Identical hostnames screw
with DHCP-driven DDNS updates. I ran into that on my home network.

-- 
:wq