Re: Init scripts as conffiles
Hi
On Tuesday 15 February 2011, Jesús M. Navarro wrote:
> Hi, Michael:
>
> On Tuesday 15 February 2011 18:37:38 Michael Fladischer wrote:
> > Tony Houghton, 2011-02-15 17:33:
> > > I was wondering, why are init scripts installed as conffiles?
> >
> > Debain switched to dependency-based boot with Squeeze and those
> > dependencies are controlled by the LSB headers inside each init script.
> > On the majority of my systems init scripts are modified to reflect
> > individual requirements of services during boot (e.g. openvpn before
> > certain services or similar). Having init scripts installed as conffiles
> > prevents such setups from breaking after each upgrade.
>
> You highlighted a very valid issue: one of the main points in going to a
> dependency-based init system is the ability of the sysadmin to reorganize the
> bootup sequence (since it's expected he knows better to workaround/reorder
> his local corner cases). Since dependencies are stated in the init file
> itself that makes it automatically a config file.
You don't need (and shouldn't) edit the init script under /etc/init.d/
to adapt their boot dependencies and ~order, but rather copy just the
associated LSB header to /etc/insserv/overrides/ and edit it following
your needs.
> Anyway, my position would be that init script shouldn't have to be config
> files. For this to be true these steps should need to be worked on:
> 1) See for boot dependencies not being stablished in the init script itself (a
> sourced directory under /etc/defaults?)
/etc/insserv/overrides/, insserv(8)
> 2) All init scripts whose related daemon accepts params on start or that
> define any kind of "global" variable (i.e.: not strictly related to Debian
> internals) should source an /etc/default-related file.
> 3) *Maybe* think about a general way for any init script to source from some
> file/dir if it exists.
> 4) Once developers are comfortable that the vast majority of init script
> honour these previous points, deprecate init scripts as being considered
> config files and file as a bug any time a sysadmin really needs to still edit
> one of them.
>
> Maybe steps 1,2 should be considered even if init scripts remain being
> considered technically config files.
Regards
Stefan Lippers-Hollmann
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