Re: updating of /etc/rc?.d

[Mike Markley <mike@markley.org>]

On Thu, Apr 26, 2001 at 01:36:41PM -0400, Jason Lunz <j@falooley.org> spake forth:
> bod@debian.org said:
> > It is possible to disable a service simply by removing links in
> > /etc/rc*.d .  So long as you leave at least one (/etc/rc0.d/K*package
> > would seem to be a good candidate), update-rc.d when called by packages
> > on upgrade is a no-op.  Something like:
> > 
> >   rm /etc/rc*.d/S*package
> > 
> > should generally do the trick.
> 
> That's a good hack, but I still think update-rc.d should support it
> directly. I was surprised to see portmap restarted after an ugrade when
> I'd previously done "update-rc.d -f remove portmap".
> 
> At the very least, this should be documented in update-rc.d(8).

update-rc.d(8) says:
       If  any  files  /etc/rcrunlevel.d/[SK]??name already exist
       then update-rc.d does nothing.  This is so that the system
       administrator  can rearrange the links, provided that they
       leave at least one link remaining,  without  having  their
       configuration overwritten.

Admittedly, it's "sort of" buried; I don't see why we couldn't modify
update-rc.d to use one of the unassigned but allowed runlevels to keep track
of this junk. I have no problem with removing all but the K symlinks in
{0,6}.d to disable services, but I've been using Debian since before slink
froze, so my knowledge of how to do it certainly does not represent what the
relative newbie to Debian may know. Of course, using runlevels 7-9 do
slightly increase the probability of running into minor incompatibilities
with setups copied from other distros (a technique that I, as a professional
sysadmin, have used many times to tame distros that I have to deal with yet
am much less familiar with - much as some sysadmins may feel towards
Debian), but since they are considered "undocumented" (and therefore,
suggestively, "possibly quite dfferent" since there is no standard or
pseudo-standard governing them) by the Debian manpages, I think it's an
acceptable tradeoff. It would be thrilling to be able to use a single
update-rc.d command line to disable a service (*cough*portmap*cough* - yes,
I have potato boxen and while this won't help them it'd be nice for planning
for our future World Domination :).

-- 
Mike Markley <mike@markley.org>
GPG: 0x3B047084 7FC7 0DC0 EF31 DF83 7313  FE2B 77A8 F36A 3B04 7084

I am pleased to see that we have differences.  May we together become
greater than the sum of both of us.
- Surak of Vulcan, "The Savage Curtain", stardate 5906.4