Adrian 'Dagurashibanipal' von Bidder wrote:
> On Thursday 15 July 2004 15.15, Martin Dickopp wrote:
> > Sebastian Henschel <debian@kodeaffe.de> writes:
> [/etc/default]
> > See Policy 9.3.2. (Disclaimer: IANADD.)
>
> Which does only say:
> | To ensure that vital configurable values are always available, the
> | init.d script should set default values for each of the shell
> | variables it uses, either before sourcing the /etc/default/ file or
> | afterwards using something like the : ${VAR:=default} syntax.
> which isn't much.
A few bits that you missed:
Often there are some variables in the `init.d' scripts whose values
control the behaviour of the scripts, and which a system administrator
is likely to want to change. As the scripts themselves are frequently
`conffile's, modifying them requires that the administrator merge in
their changes each time the package is upgraded and the `conffile'
changes. To ease the burden on the system administrator, such
configurable values should not be placed directly in the script.
Instead, they should be placed in a file in `/etc/default', which
typically will have the same base name as the `init.d' script. This
extra file should be sourced by the script when the script runs. It
must contain only variable settings and comments in POSIX `sh' format.
It may either be a `conffile' or a configuration file maintained by
the package maintainer scripts. See Section 10.7, `Configuration
files' for more details.
9.3.5. Example
--------------
The `bind' DNS (nameserver) package wants to make sure that the
nameserver is running in multiuser runlevels, and is properly shut
down with the system. It puts a script in `/etc/init.d', naming the
script appropriately `bind'. As you can see, the script interprets
the argument `reload' to send the nameserver a `HUP' signal (causing
it to reload its configuration); this way the system administrator can
say `/etc/init.d/bind reload' to reload the name server. The script
has one configurable value, which can be used to pass parameters to
the named program at startup; this value is read from
`/etc/default/bind' (see below).
...
Complementing the above init script is a configuration file
`/etc/default/bind', which contains configurable parameters used by
the script. This would be created by the `postinst' script if it was
not already present, and removed on purge by the `postrm' script.
# Specified parameters to pass to named. See named(8).
# You may uncomment the following line, and edit to taste.
#PARAMS="-u nobody"
It's really not that hard to run less on policy and type /etc\/default
--
see shy jo
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