Core client config file locations

[Eric Myers]

The files c_config.xml, global_prefs_override.xml, gui_rpc_auth.cfg, and remote_hosts.cfg are configuration files which the user can edit (even if most won't), so Debian requires that they be under /etc, while the "usual" place for them is the working directory. Right now the Debian package takes care of this with soft links. A more robust solution would be to have the core client look for the files in a list of places, using the first it finds. The files in the working directory would be checked first, and used if they exist. The files in /etc/boinc would be checked and used if nothing is found in the working directory.

See the discusion at http://boinc.berkeley.edu/trac/wiki/UnixClientPackage

[romw]

Isn't /etc only supposed to be tweaked by administrators?

This would work well for package installs where BOINC is being installed as a daemon, but how is this supposed to work is BOINC has been installed by the user in their home directory?

It should probably be: ~/etc /usr/etc /etc

Or something to that effect.

[Nicolas]

Replying to romw:

Isn't /etc only supposed to be tweaked by administrators?

This would work well for package installs where BOINC is being installed as a daemon, but how is this supposed to work is BOINC has been installed by the user in their home directory?

I don't know how to do it for official binaries, but if a user builds it from source, he would specify a different --prefix to get it on his home directory, and /etc would end up in ~/my_boinc_build/etc. If he doesn't set a prefix, it would be in /usr/local/etc (just like binaries would be in /usr/local/bin).

It should be in /etc if the binaries are in /usr/bin, which only happens if BOINC is installed by the package manager.