On Thu, Jul 3, 2014, at 07:11 AM, Vratislav Podzimek wrote:
WHAT?! ACK, but this is real madness.
Oh it's pretty ugly for sure in Anaconda, I wouldn't disagree. systemd upstream is moving to include some of this logic there: http://cgit.freedesktop.org/systemd/systemd/commit/?id=9339db7187c61eb7ae7e6...
What we're missing then after a newer systemd is the "mail" subdirectory; probably the "filesystem" RPM should ship a snippet for it?
There is a real set of benefits to this model: all local system state is cleanly isolated into /var (with config files in /etc).
This enables: * Clarity of state management: On upgrades (or rollback), you know that the OSTree upgrade tool simply *will not touch* anything in /var. It's yours to back up and manage, in concert with upgrades, or asynchronously.
* Factory reset: Reset this system to a pristine state, with no local users, no data or caches, etc. On reboot, the OS takes you back to firstboot setup.
* Readonly systems: If you want a readonly system, you now only need to make /var a tmpfs, and /etc be a read-only bind mount. (You can also make /var readonly but we're a bit aways from the OS not being full of error spew in that scenario)