Hi, I'd like to raise a couple of suggestions for update-rc.d. First, there are some problems that currently affect startup scripts: * It's not obvious how to go about disabling /etc/init.d scripts from running correctly. (update-rc.d remove doesn't stay removed when a package gets upgraded, editing the init.d script always feels like a hack and encourages dpkg to whine at you later, and rm'ing all the S* links, but not all of the K* links is a little obscure, and doesn't work properly either) * The only way to ensure a service *never* gets started automatically (adding an "exit 0" in the init.d script) also makes it impossible to start it manually. * When running /etc/init.d/foo restart in postinsts, you can accidently start a service in a runlevel where it's not meant to be started. (if you're running in single-user mode, or have a more complicated setup than the default runlevels) * When running /etc/init.d/foo start in postinsts, you can inherit bad environment settings. * When running /etc/init.d/foo start from a root prompt, you can inherit bad environment settings. What I'd like to suggest is something along the lines of: update-rc.d foo disable -- to disable foo in such a way that later postinsts don't re-enable it. update-rc.d foo enable -- to restore the original settings and update-rc.d foo -s start -- to run "/etc/init.d/foo start" if foo is meant to be running in this runlevel. Expected usage in postinsts would be: update-rc.d foo defaults -s restart If update-rc.d -s start were to go to some special effort to ensure environment settings made sense, that would leave only the last flaw listed above. (Implementing "disable" and "enable" for sysvinit are pretty easy -- disable can just change all the symlinks to point to /bin/true, and enable change them back to /etc/init.d/foo. It could also just remove all the S links, but this makes re-enabling it later harder for the sysadmin.) Since update-rc.d is a standard interface, and is provided by a couple of packages, it seemed more appropriate to discuss this here than to harass the respective maintainers. Cheers, aj -- Anthony Towns <aj@humbug.org.au> <http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/> I don't speak for anyone save myself. PGP encrypted mail preferred. ``Like the ski resort of girls looking for husbands and husbands looking for girls, the situation is not as symmetrical as it might seem.''
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