Package: debian-policy Version: 3.5.7.1 Severity: wishlist Currently the Debian policy mandates regarding scripts a few conventions including which arguments to accept and how to ouput the results: http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-opersys.html#s10.4 However, even if it's common sense, it might be necessary to introduce also a convention regarding error checking and logging. Many maintainers are getting used (and I see this from init.d scripts derived from RedHat packages' code) to *not* check errors at all. Maintainers are sometimes sending output to /dev/null in order to not taint the console's output which might lead to the user not being aware of problems/issues when a script is run. Some maintainers are doing it properly (and sending a 'failed' to console when it cannot start) and some are not. However even in the previous case, the user might want to dig into the problem in order to see what/why has failed. IMHO the policy should mandate that error checking be done and any errors be sent in "not verbose" format to the console (...failed) and in verbose format to some log (which should be of course logrotated but that'0s another issue). The location of this log (/var/log/messages or a new one /var/log/init.d.log?) should be specified in this policy too. Any errors/messages from the init.d scripts should be sent there. This makes it easier for users to know why a given service has failed in case the system starts up unattended (and thus nobody looks at the console) or it lacks console at all. Regards Javi
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