Re: /etc/init.d scripts WAS: Re: start-stop-daemon on Debian (fwd)
On Sun, 18 Apr 1999, Steve Greenland 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.
Yes, it does require a lot of people to make modifications to a lot of
scripts -- but it certainly doesn't require modifications again if the
root path ever changes. Why? Because these script are appending what THEY
need, even if it's already in the root path. That doesn't hurt the path,
ensures that the user set root path is used first and that the script will
run fine, even if that user set root path changes to something
unreasonable.
> 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.
There was also a third proposal of "Assume nothing's sane and set whatever
you need" allows the script to build upon root and not take away.
> 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.
Right. And how does APPENDING a path statement store copies of it in each
place? I understand the concept, and am not asking each script to store
the main root path, but to append what IT needs, and only what it needs to
run. But since we're appending, we're not overwriting and we're
incorporating it by environment variable and not hard-coding what the
parent path is but refering to it by it's environment name.
--
Brock Rozen brozen@torah.org
Director of Technical Services (410)358-9800
Project Genesis http://www.torah.org/
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