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Re: enabling/disabling daemons



On Mon, Sep 23, 2002 at 06:48:59PM -0400, Matt Zimmerman wrote:
> It does contain the same data as the rc?.d tree.  Were you looking for an
> additional on/off switch that would be ANDed with the runlevel data?  Or to
> avoid the runlevel system entirely?

When you install the ssh package, you are asked a debconf question "Do
you want to run the ssh server?".  If you say no, then a file
/etc/ssh/sshd_not_to_be_run is created.  The sshd init script checks for
the existance of this file and does not start sshd if it exists.
Postgresql also has this kind of functionality, but it's implemented
completely different.  

These packages use this mechanism to disable the service completely,
regardless of what's in /etc/rc?.d.  This works around the bug that
causes services to be started upon upgrade even if no /etc/rc?.d/S*
links exist at all.  (Maybe the bug really is that /etc/init.d/foo
restart will start the package if it wasn't previously running.)

I want to create a standard way to say 'this service should not be
started'.  I don't want to change the way the init system works at all;
it works fine.  I'm sick of installing a package and removing all the
start links from /etc/rc?.d/, only to see the package get automatically
started next time I upgrade it.

Every time I've seen this argument made in the past, the response has
always be "well why did you install the package if you don't want to run
it?"  I don't think that reply is valid.  There are plenty of sane
reasons why you might want to install a server package but leave it
disabled.

noah

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