A random question. Does /etc stand for Et Cetera? I can't really see why it would, but then I can't think of anything else it would stand for. Et Cetera means literally "and so forth", so I'd expect a folder called /etc to contain miscellaneous files rather than configuration data. Anyone know? Bnonn
On Tue, Apr 26, 2005 at 11:51:50AM +1200, Bnonn wrote:
A random question. Does /etc stand for Et Cetera? I can't really see why it would, but then I can't think of anything else it would stand for. Et Cetera means literally "and so forth", so I'd expect a folder called /etc to contain miscellaneous files rather than configuration data.
Anyone know?
http://www.linux-tutorial.info/modules.php?name=Tutorial&pageid=9 Might have some info. Cheers, James
James Clark wrote:
http://www.linux-tutorial.info/modules.php?name=Tutorial&pageid=9
Might have some info.
From the article: "The /etc directory contains files and programs that are used for system configuration. Its name comes from the common abbreviation etc., for et cetera, meaning "and so on." This seems to come from the fact that on many systems, /etc contains files that don't seem to fit elsewhere." Seems a bit of a weird justification to me; all the files in /etc seem to fit there in my opinion, and it would probably be more logically called /config, but then I imagine it's been around for longer than I have, and its purpose may well have evolved?
Bnonn wrote:
James Clark wrote:
http://www.linux-tutorial.info/modules.php?name=Tutorial&pageid=9
Might have some info.
From the article:
"The /etc directory contains files and programs that are used for system configuration. Its name comes from the common abbreviation etc., for et cetera, meaning "and so on." This seems to come from the fact that on many systems, /etc contains files that don't seem to fit elsewhere."
Seems a bit of a weird justification to me; all the files in /etc seem to fit there in my opinion, and it would probably be more logically called /config, but then I imagine it's been around for longer than I have, and its purpose may well have evolved?
Before linux came along, /etc was just a dumping ground for random crud. init and getty and related services lived in /etc, there was no /boot directory so a lot of the crud in /boot ended up in /etc. So when the Linux FileSystem Standard (now Linux Standard Base) was first written, they mandated /boot, /root, /sbin etc to get the crap out of /etc so that /etc would just have configuration files in it. ref: http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/docs/fsstnd/old/fsstnd-1.0/fsstnd-1.0.txt.g...
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Bnonn -
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Perry Lorier