> Like the title says, why the change in /etc/netstart as of 4-1-97?  I can
> understand wanting to change the way various daemons are started, but why
> change the interface config files from hostname.* to ifconfig.*?  That name
> convention was one of the few things that survived from SunOS to Solaris,
> and now we are deliberately making ourselves different?  Why?

Huh?

The naming in NetBSD of those files wasn't cloned from SunOS or
Solaris, nor did it come from Berkeley.  It was picked out of thin
air.  (How do I know?  I was the one who did it!)

I sincerely doubt that the formats of those files were the same
between SunOS/Solaris and NetBSD, in any case.  If they were, that's
happy (and quite amazing) coincidence.


The point of changing the name was that, since the contents of the
files weren't going to be backward compatible with the old files, it
would have been stupid to keep the file names the same, given no other
reason to do so.  There was no other reason, and therefore the names
were changed.  In the long run, this will save users the hassle of
figuring out why ifconfig was puking, then figuring out what was
different about the two file formats.


cgd