On Thursday, March 13, 2008 at 13:42:11 -0400, Mike Frysinger wrote: > config files generally setup options to pass, not environment > variables. if the option to control the location is available at > runtime, providing an env var back door rather than command line is > just awkward. We are not talking about exactly the same thing. There is sometimes an option, sometimes an env var, and sometimes both. When both, generally the option takes precedence. No "back door" var involved. Command line option and env var are just two mechanisms to do the same thing, one is no better than the other, but one may be better adapted to a given usage. Or the other. That's all generalities. With hwclock we have a quite specific case. The same setting is required by all invocations. Hwclock can be called by various scripts and by hand. A main config file (/etc/default/hwclock?) cannot easely pass the appropriate --adjfile to hand calls. An env var permits that, and still works for scripted calls. The command line solution needs the scripts calling hwclock to be modified to source the main config file. While the env var solution should not require modifications of the scripts. Really ADJTIME_PATH is functionally better than --adjfile in this case. Alain. -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe util-linux-ng" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html