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Re: SysVinit prob... now runlevel question



-> > As I understand it, X86 hardware hardly ever uses anything but two
-> > levels. I know sun hardware actually makes significant use of the
-> > runlevels, but I am made to understand that nobody ever really bothered
-> > to implement any more than two different runlevels.

init runlevels and kernel runlevels are something different.

init runlevels have nothing to do with hardware.

-> Solaris does use runlevels a bit differently, but not vastly different:
-> on Solaris, run level 2 is for "things brought up when we want to play
-> nice on the network but aren't fully awake".  So the "clienty" things
-> usually go in rc2.d (such as nfs.client) while the "serverish" things
-> (like nfs.server).  From 'man init' on Slugaris:
-> 
->      2         Put the system in multi-user mode.  All multi-user
->                environment  terminal  processes  and  daemons are
->                spawned.  This state is commonly  referred  to  as
->                the multi-user state.
-> 
->      3         Extend multi-user mode by making  local  resources
->                available over the network.
-> 
->      4         Is available  to  be  defined  as  an  alternative
->                multi-user  environment  configuration.  It is not
->                necessary for system operation and is usually  not
->                used.
-> 
-> Does Solaris really distinguish greatly?  Nope... the main difference on
-> my Suns is that rc3.d has nfs.server in it.

I really like this solaris differences and I really use it, especialy at
home...

runlevel 2 - multiuser without network services (also xinetd sendmail
    probably sshd etc)
- very useful to upgrade, maintain, configure etc system while nothing from
outside can disturb you. Many consoles used (I use 8, debian's default is 6)

runlevel 1 - running minimum of programs, only onw console etc
- for some special actions - fixing, repairing systems, maybe upgrading some
exxential packages (although I already upgraded hot system in runlevel 3
with running network services - nothing special happened)

-> Unlike RH or other "popular" distributions, Debian does -not- distinguish
-> between the useful run levels (as opposed to the special ones like
-> on-the-way-up-or-down ones).  Instead, it leaves the choice of the
-> differences to be up to the local administrator.

I think at least the level above should be accepted. Default runlevel after
first boot should be 2 (sysadmin should look at everything before connects
newly installed machine to the net) and then, if someone decides, change it
to 3 where all network services would run.

levels 4 and 5 could be left for user to configure; level 0 means halt,
level 6 reboot (the fastest way to shutdown/reboot system w/o users is to do
init 0 or 6)

-- 
 Matus "fantomas" Uhlar, sysadmin at NEXTRA, Slovakia; IRCNET admin of *.sk
 uhlar@fantomas.sk ; http://www.fantomas.sk/ ; http://www.nextra.sk/
 42.7 percent of all statistics are made up on the spot. 



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