During upgrades there usually appear new varibales and features. This creates conflicts when user has changes the settings.
I propose that the configuration file is split in two halves:
1) The most likely settings user would touch
2) Less important options
The change in init.d/* is minimal since it only would add a second "source" command.
LIST OF SUGGESTED VARIABLES IN CATEGORY (1);
- LAPTOP_MODE_ALWAYS_ON=1 - LM_WHEN_LID_CLOSED=0 - MINIMUM_BATTERY_MINUTES=7 - MAX_AGE=600
I'm sorry, I don't really agree. None of the other packages do things this way, and like all other packages, laptop mode is safe to upgrade without overwriting the config files. It will simply use the default values for any missing config values. When upgrading, you should simply say "no" to the question if you want the config file overwritten. And if you then want to change some parameter that is not in your original config file, then the description of the parameter can be found in the manual page or in the /etc/laptop-mode/laptop-mode.conf.dpkg-dist.
In addition, I think that the set of settings that are likely to change is rather large -- it fully depends on the user's configuration wishes. Your suggestions for category (1) seem rather arbitrary, probably based on what _you_ tweaked. Analysis per item:
* Personally, I don't expect MINIMUM_BATTERY_MINUTES to be changed all that much except by real tweakers (the value doesn't really matter as long as laptop mode is turned off at some point before power fails). And if this would have been in category (1), then I would have had to change the category (1) config file at least in version 1.00 and 1.05, as the default for this value changed in 1.00 and as I added the sibling settings MINIMUM_BATTERY_CHARGE_MAH and MINIMUM_BATTERY_CHARGE_MWH in 1.05. So that wouldn't have helped.
* Neither do I think that MAX_AGE should need to be changed a lot (as maximum power savings are pretty much already achieved at MAX_AGE=120, see the measurements in my article in the Sept 2004 issue of Linux Journal, so it's not really worth increasing the value more).
* LAPTOP_MODE_ALWAYS_ON is a feature that is not likely to change a lot either, as most people in the target audience (laptop users) don't want laptop mode to be on when they're on AC power. This feature is really only for people with extremely hot HDs (e.g. powerbook users) and for server usage (computing clusters that get most of their data from central storage).
* Regarding LM_WHEN_LID_CLOSED: AFAIK most people don't care what laptop mode does when the lid is closed, because they're not using the computer then anyway.
BTW, it _is_ easy to identify things that are _really_ unlikely to change. These are mostly the DEF_* settings, and probably the DO_CPU stuff. It's just that I haven't added any new settings to that set of settings ever since the laptop-mode-tools was first conceived, so every new thing that I've added would have ended up in category (1) anyway. :(
--Bart
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