On Jan 26, Perry E. Metzger wrote:
| There are two ways to do this: change the default in the binary, or
| change the default in /etc/defaults/rc.conf.
| 
| Which do people prefer that I do? My opinion at the moment is that
| changing it in /etc/defaults/rc.conf is "correct" because changing it
| in the binary could break people tracking current, but on the other
| hand, it is bloody obvious that for ten years in NetBSD the file has
| natively lived in /etc/namedb/ so perhaps the default should change in
| the binary.

the system and the binary should simply not disagree on what
the default is, so pick one and make everything agree.

a flag in /etc/defaults/rc.conf is probably the worst of all
options as it causes problems with ndc (both start and restart
will fail).  (For restart, you could argue that it's a bug
with ndc/named, but that won't help you with start.)

(This is why i use a symlink like you do, and yes, it's annoying.)