[GLLUG] usr

[Matt Graham]

On Thursday 16 September 2004 09:01, after a long battle with 
technology, Edward Glowacki wrote:
> On Thu, 2004-09-16 at 00:03, Ben Pfaff wrote:
>> Marshal Newrock <marshal at simons-rock.edu> writes:
>>> Now if only I could figure out why they called the directory with
>>> all the config files "etc" instead of something like "conf".
>> Putting only configuration files in /etc seems to be a fairly
>> modern trend.  Older Unix systems had random binaries and other
>> cruft in /etc.
> Hmm, maybe /etc stands for "Extra Trash Collection"... ;)

Oh, come on.  Next you'll be telling me about the Pathologically 
Eclectic Rubbish Lister, or that Emacs Makes A Computer Slow. :-)

> I googled a bit for it, but couldn't find anything defining where
> /etc came from or what it was originally meant to be. =(  So I'll go
> with my own definition above! ;)

Of course, /etc is "etcetera".  The real definition was probably "stuff 
that doesn't really fit anywhere else" and is probably the source of 
the random binaries and other stuff Ben Pfaff mentioned.  System 
configuration files probably migrated there because init's config file 
is already in /etc/inittab, and of course /etc/passwd and /etc/group 
have long histories.  At one point, the Linux Standards Base said, "no 
executables should be in /etc," so SuSE moved their init scripts 
from /etc/init.d/ to /sbin/init.d/ .  A few releases later, they moved 
them back.

The VAX at Michigan Tech in the mid-1980s definitely had some random 
crud in /etc, but I don't remember anything more than that.  I was more 
interested in playing Rogue than learning Unix at that time.

-- 
  "Bother," said Pooh.  "Eeyore, ready two photon torpedoes and lock
  phasers on the Heffalump; Piglet, meet me in transporter room three."
     --Robert Billing
There is no Darkness in Eternity/But only Light too dim for us to see