Base cases are covered:

[ariel@bigtrouble modules]$ grep -r adminsett .
./snapshot/templates/dumps/wikidump.conf.erb:adminsettings=private/PrivateSettings.php
./snapshot/templates/addschanges.conf.erb:adminsettings=private/PrivateSettings.php

One cron script uses this ugly approach, but it works:

db_pass=`echo 'echo $wgDBadminpassword;' | php "$multiversionscript" eval.php aawiki`

All other cron jobs look like they piggyback on MediaWiki directly or on the adminsettings config settings shown above. Not quite done looking though.

I've checked everything in the dumps repos and in puppet that has anything to do with dumps, their related cron jobs, configuration, etc. Even checked a couple unrelated repos like the ops software repo just in case I forgot something. Looks ok.

Yeah I already went through all repos and everything seems to reference it directly. I'm also going to go in two stages: swap the wmf-config to point to the direct file. Wait a bit. Thennnnnn we'll drop the symlink.