Typically, installed applications have their own configuration files and syntax. It is important that these files be kept separate from the base system, so that they may be easily located and managed by the package management tools.
Typically, these files are installed in /usr/local/etc
. In the case
where an application has a large number of configuration
files, a subdirectory will be created to hold them.
Normally, when a port or package is installed, sample
configuration files are also installed. These are usually
identified with a suffix such as .sample
.
If there are no existing configuration files for the
application, they can be created by copying the sample
files.
For example, consider the contents of the directory
/usr/local/etc/apache
:
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 2184 May 20 1998 access.conf -rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 2184 May 20 1998 access.conf.default -rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 9555 May 20 1998 httpd.conf -rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 9555 May 20 1998 httpd.conf.default -rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 12205 May 20 1998 magic -rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 12205 May 20 1998 magic.default -rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 2700 May 20 1998 mime.types -rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 2700 May 20 1998 mime.types.default -rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 7980 May 20 1998 srm.conf -rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 7933 May 20 1998 srm.conf.default
The file sizes show that only srm.conf
has been changed. A later update of the
Apache port would not overwrite
this changed file.
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