Re: /etc/init.d scripts WAS: Re: start-stop-daemon on Debian (fwd)
On 18-Apr-99, 07:54 (CDT), Brock Rozen <brozen@torah.org> wrote:
> Does it hurt anything? I've yet to see anybody point out to me that it
> does.
Again: it requires that a lot of people make modifications to a lot
scripts. It then puts us in a position that if the standard root path
ever changes, all those people have to modify all those scripts again.
The other proposal ("Assume root's PATH and other environment variables
are sane") centralizes that decision and lets those environment
variables change easily, if necessary.
It's a basic database principle that if you have a piece of data that
is used in many places and needs to be the same in all of those places,
that you *don't* store copies of it in each place. You store one
instance, and refer to that instance when needed.
> Does it help? Well, sure, it CAN help. Maybe not everybody, but
> there's certainly a good number of users out there that it can help.
Really? How many users modify their root PATH to not contain the
standard binary directories? Why are they doing this? I realize that
there are a lot of new Unix(tm) users out there, and I think we ought to
do reasonable stuff to accomodate them and make their lives easier. However,
I don't think that training them that it's okay to change root's path
in arbitrary ways is a good idea. The message needs to be
"The root account is special. Don't use root for everyday work. Don't
screw with root's files or environment unless you know what you are
doing. If you make a change, test it before you get yourself in a
situation you can't back out of. Always have a boot floppy available.
Always backup changes to configuration files. Etc. etc. etc."
Such a message will serve our users much better in the long run,
especially those who go on to work with other distributions and other
Unices, than will attempts to save them from doing stupid things.
Steve
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