Re: How can I modify /etc/inittab?
On Mon, Sep 12, 2005 at 08:51:09AM +1000, Ben Finney wrote:
> On 11-Sep-2005, Henrique de Moraes Holschuh wrote:
> > On Fri, 09 Sep 2005, Joe Smith wrote:
> > Yes. But AFAIK there are absolutely no plans to provide an
> > interface for ANY package to touch /etc/inittab. Screwing it up is
> > so utterly callous, that one would have to be out of his mind to
> > encourage any package to attempt to "auto configure" anything inside
> > /etc/inittab.
>
> Yet it is a configuration file with a simple, well-defined format;
> surely such a tool is conceivable? Would you recommend against using
> it, regardless of its merits, if it did exist?
As noted, automated changes to this file are explicitly disallowed by
policy. However, _non_automated changes are not. If there was a tool
/usr/share/foo/enable-foo-in-inittab, which was, perhaps, a #!/bin/sh
script or #!/usr/bin/perl, or #!/bin/sed -f, then it would be allowed
(the tool must not be called, even conditionally, by the maintscripts
or by anything else; only the user may call that program:
# /usr/share/foo/enable-foo-in-inittab
README.Debian might suggest this script for enabling the functionality
of the package. Of course, it would be best if that script was as
assertive as possible, so that someone's unexpectedly-strange inittab
was detected as such, instead of "cast" as a regular inittab, and
misinterpretted.
Justin
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