"Paul E Condon" <pecondon@mesanetworks.net> wrote in message news:20050919153759.GC7804@big...
Basically the debian point of view is that runlevels are the wrong solution to the problem. If you need to be able to interactive decide what services and subsystems start up automatically, then you should use a truely interactive booting system.On Mon, Sep 19, 2005 at 11:11:55AM -0400, Ron Peterson wrote:On Mon, Sep 19, 2005 at 10:40:46AM -0400, Ron Peterson wrote: > Can anyone explain why Debian's runlevel policy seems to have strayed > so far from traditional System V? Why is xdm/gdm/kdm etc. in runlevel > three, for example?Debian, as a distribution, really doesn't use runlevels 3-5, but it does set them up in skeletal fashion as a convenience to a local sysadmin who wants to use them for local purposes. Mostly what is there is just what Debian puts in runlevel 2. It saves a bit if copying by the sysadmin. I don't think it is governed by policy. The policy is that 3-5 are for local use.
Part of the reason for the trditional system is that packages are qquite hard to remove in RedHat-style systems. If a debian sysadmin does not what a display manager (Funny name, as they are more like a login-manager) they can just uninstall it.
The vast majority of the time a 'traditional' system is booted into either runlevel 5 or runlevel 3. So often in fact that making all debian runlevels equivlent to that makes good sense. Basically it makes life easier on the end user. In the quite rare case that some of the services are unwanted the services can be stopped by hand or 'init=/bin/bash' can be used.