Re: Suggestion

["Torbjörn Gannholm" <torbjorn.gannholm@swipnet.se>]

Allover Stripes wrote:

> Thomas MANGIN <t-mang98@bat710.univ-lyon1.fr> writes:
>
> > I hope I will not be totally out of subject.
> >
> > I would like to submit a sugestion even if I wasn t able to install Hurd
> > for the moment due to hardware and internet access restruiction.
> > I notice in Linux init process that user level applications have no
> > possibility to change anything in the "boot sequence" I mean add a new
> > entry to Path or excute a user level deamon and so on. I was thinking
> > about domething like and /etc/init.d/application folder where every
> > software would be able to write. This will allow something like
> > for I in /etc/init.d/application/*
> > do
> >  exec $i
> > done
> >
> > This is mainly the basic idea. If this is totally stupid I would like t
> > oknow where I am false
>
> First of all, in the Debian distribution, debian packages can do
> exactly this --- have a per-application file started.
> (sniff-glue-0.6_0.7.deb can simply install the script
> /etc/init.d/sniff-glue which can start, restart or stop daemons.)
> Moreover, one version of cron (Vixie cron?) does in fact allow users
> to set cron jobs to be started on system boot.  There are, as another
> poster noted, some security issues, and some sysadmins are unwilling
> to run this version of cron for this reason.
>

Forgive me for butting in, particularly since I've now unsubscribed until I get
time to start running Hurd (keep up the good work, btw!).

It wouldn't have to be a security issue if you have per-user directories for
this kind of thing.
As an IRIX sysadmin, I start daemons that run as a non-root user by doing an 'su
- other_user exec_command' in an init.d-script. One could probably make a
wrapper that does this for all scripts in a user-directory.
However, most things you want to do should probably be done at login-time,
rather than boot-time, so as not to clutter the system for another poor user. It
shouldn't be too hard to include this in the login sequence. (Yes, I know you
can do things in .profile or .bashrc and the like, but these should probably be
run for every new shell, rather than once in the main login)Then you could add a
logout sequence which notes what is running before closing it, so that it can be
brought up again at the next login.

> In any case, I think this need not be a Hurd-specific arrangement; you
> may want to suggest it on a general Debian development list.

That's definitely a good point.

--
/torbjörn