Santiago Vila wrote: > * Remove this file altogether, since it serves no useful purpose.
The file does serve a useful purpose: it concentrates the debian version number string that is used in a number of places (issue.net and so on) into one central place to be modified. > * Make it a conffile (and therefore change its traditional behaviour). This is of course the thing I want. A behavior change will only occur if the admin edits the file though -- it is not as if making it a conffile is going to at all affect people who don't modify it. > * Keep the file as it is, as an exception to FHS, like /etc/mtab which > is not a configuration file either. I think /etc/mtab is on its way out. A 2.4.x kernel with devfs has a /proc/mounts that actually has a proper line for the root filesystem. Linking the two files would probably actually work on such a system without breakage. Of course /etc/mtab has always bothered me too.. But then /etc has historically been full of all sorts of garbage that the fsstnd/fhs has slowly eliminated. -- see shy jo