[Grml] Wish lists for enhancing the grml configuration system

[Tong Sun]

Package: restore-config
Severity: wishlist

Hi, Mika:

First of all, thanks for your hard works that releases grml 0.9-7,
and grml-small 0.3-2 recently. 

I hope the following minor enhancements to the grml configuration
system can make into the 1.0 release.

- support reading configuration files from NTFS partitions. Don't
  know if it already possible, just list it here first.

- myconfig=scan. I know by default the booting process tries to
  mount a device labeled GRMLCFG, and do configuration from
  there. 

  The problem is that, in nowadays window$ world, the cooperate
  policy will most often prevent me from change my own disk
  label. You won't believe it, nowadays window$ world is so
  dummy-proof that in many places I can't even change my window$
  desktop settings.

  So I need another automatic way to specify the grml configuration
  device. 

- Boot-Options config.d, i.e., please define a grml configuration
  directory. On booting all the .tbz files from within the defined
  directory or from the config.d option, will be restored, in the
  order by their names.

  The save-config generated configuration, the plain bzip2
  compressed tar archives is a good thing. But I don't like the fact
  that all related or unrelated files are all stuffed into this same
  file. I hope that I can group related files into different .tbz
  files. It is much more easy to manage than a single file.

- Boot-Options scripts.d, same concept as config.d, for scripts.

- persistentroot. I don't know how comfortable you are about the
  union fs now, but I still think that a partition or a loopback
  device as a persistent root, i.e., not only persistent home, is a
  good idea.

  To tell the truth, ever since installing grml 0.7 onto my HD, I
  didn't use/test the new grml iso files any more. Because I've put
  so much time & effort configuring the installed grml, that I don't
  want to waste my time again for a new iso versions. With
  persistentroot, the journey migrating to newer versions of grml
  can be a bit smoother.

  Moreover, having a persistentroot can put the automatic
  installation of debian packages (from directory named debs) into
  real use, because I think the amount of debian packages that can
  be automatic installed is limited by ram space. 

These are all small changes that will have big impacts. Much more 
flexibilities can be achieved by doing so. 

Thanks

Tong

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 4.0
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (50, 'unstable'), (30, 'stable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Shell:  /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Kernel: Linux 2.6.17-grml
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C (charmap=ANSI_X3.4-1968)