On Wed, Jul 04, 2001 at 08:06:36AM +0100, Alan Cox wrote:
> > Why is it expected that applications will need to write to
> > /var/mail/<username>? Should, say, OpenOffice.lsb fail to work because
> > I put my mail in ~/mail in maildir format?
> Packages need default assumptions about how mail is delivered. Remember the
> ISV may be installing mail agents, pop, imap servers or even an MTA
> such as sendmail.com's sendmail
Well, they could be installing apache, or a web client too; but if they
do, they're assumed to be sensible enough to tell that software where
their web pages are themselves (/var/www, file:/var/www/foo.html). It's
not unreasonable for software to want to send mail, but that would mean
it'd need to use /usr/sbin/sendmail, not write to /var/mail/* directly.
> > Why are runlevels specified? If I choose to run a system that doesn't use
> > runlevels, why should ISV's software break? If I choose to give different
> > meanings to the first 6 runlevels, why should ISV's software break?
> You can use whatever runlevels you like so long as you remap the runlevels
> the LSB programs talk about to your own.
As far as I can tell, none of the LSB programs (as far as the ISV sees)
use these runlevels though. There's no "change-runlevel" command, and
there doesn't seem to be any way for an ISV to say "please invoke my
init script in these runlevels: .. .. ..". If it's just an implementation
matter, it probably shouldn't be in the spec at all.
Cheers,
aj
--
Anthony Towns <aj@humbug.org.au> <http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/>
I don't speak for anyone save myself. GPG signed mail preferred.
``_Any_ increase in interface difficulty, in exchange for a benefit you
do not understand, cannot perceive, or don't care about, is too much.''
-- John S. Novak, III (The Humblest Man on the Net)
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