Re: RFC: support for "first boot" rc.d scripts

On Mon, 2013-10-14 at 09:51 -0700, Colin Percival wrote:
> Hi Nick,
> 
> On 10/14/13 00:59, Nick Hibma wrote:
> > Sounds useful: We have nanobsd images that configure a hard disk if present, but obviously only need to be run once.
> > 
> > However: NanoBSD stores uses a memory disk for /etc and stores it's permanent scripts in /conf/* (/etc/rc.initdiskless) and/or /cfg (NanoBSD) so I doubt whether the 'embedded systems' argument is of much use, as deleting the script or flagging 'firstboot' is non-permanent.
> 
> Yes, it's hard to store state on diskless systems... but I figured
> that anyone building a diskless system would know to not create a
> "run firstboot scripts" marker.  And not all embedded systems are
> diskless...
> 

The embedded systems we create at $work have readonly root and mfs /var,
but we do have writable storage on another filesystem.  It would work
for us (not that we need this feature right now) if there were an rcvar
that pointed to the marker file.  Of course to make it work, something
would have to get the alternate filesystem mounted early enough to be
useful (that is something we do already with a custom rc script).

Note that I'm not asking for any changes here, just babbling.

-- Ian