Re: LSB specification of runlevels

["David Starner" <dstarner98@aasaa.ofe.org>]

From: Theodore Tso <tytso@mit.edu>
> The problem is that Unix does *not* have straightforward interfaces;
> Unix (and Debian programs in particular; see a separate rant I've
> written about why dselect sucks as an interface) give you lots of
> power, but it doesn't give you straightforward interfaces to
> accomplish specific tasks which users commonly want to do.  Sure,
> "/etc/init.d/{service} {init-action}" and dselect are a much more
> general interfaces.  But general interfaces which don't have easy ways
> of doing commonly needed tasks are often really lousy and painful
> interfaces to use, even for experts.

Easy way to turn off xdm: /etc/init.d/xdm stop
(If you're using Gnome, you probably want /etc/init.d/gdm stop; KDE
/etc/init.d/kdm stop.)
Easy way to turn off dictd: /etc/init.d/dictd stop
Easy way to turn off ftpd: /etc/init.d/ftpd stop

Another way to turn off xdm/gdm/kdm (that may or may not turn off other
stuff): telinit 5
No way to turn off dictd, ftpd or any other services without taking out a
large group of programs.

If you want to turn services on and off, /etc/init.d/* is the tool to do it.
If LSB wants to introduce a service_start or service_stop or something else,
then that's okay. But while telinit can start and stop one particular
service, it can't start and stop arbitrary services, or even any service
that a normal user might want to toggle on and off.

--
David Starner - dstarner98@aasaa.ofe.org