Re: update-rc.d

[Miguel Alvarez Blanco <miguel@carbono.quimica.uniovi.es>]

Henrique de Moraes Holschuh wrote:
> update-rc.d is working as intended. Read its manpage about how you as the
> local admin should interact with it.
>
> In particular, update-rc.d is to be used ONLY by the packaging system, not
> by the local admin.

Thanks for the quick response. However, I am not sure if I understand 
correctly. The manpage only states that:

a) if the sysadmin wants to fiddle with the links, he may do so 
(presumably by hand?) and the packaging system will not touch them 
*provided the sysadmin leaves at least one of the links*. Now, I can see 
how to use this to remove all but an unreachable link (i.e., a K99ipmasq 
link in an unused runlevel) so that the system does not touch them, but 
I do think that it is very ugly, tricking the system and not fixing it.

b) update-rc.d will remove its links if requested and the script is not 
there (well, or if -f is used as I do), if its first argument is purge, 
so that the user has requested the configuration to be removed. Now, 
this is just what I do not want to do: I want to leave the package in 
the system, so that re-activating it does not require net access (a bit 
silly with ipmasq, I know, but as I said this is general).

As I said in the first message, I do not know how to keep a package 
installed in the system and yet be able to de-activate its startup 
scripts, sort of like leaving it unconfigured. I am sorry, but although 
I try to read as much documentation as I have available, in many cases 
the problem is to know where to look. I have not seen anywhere that 
update-rc.d is intended only for the packaging system, for example, and 
indeed I only came across the update-rc.d script while trying to 
configure the startup behavior of the system and reading the /etc/init.d 
scripts directly.

I would really like to know if there is such thing as a Debian system's 
administration guide that documents all of the clever scripts and 
schemes that all of you implement: I really would like to know the way 
in which the /etc/network scripts are intended to be used or modified, 
for example, in order to couple them with things like netenv for laptop 
alternative startup configuration, or PCMCIA/hotplug interaction, or ... 
In summary, I need pointers to the appropriate documents, or, more 
properly, meta-documents that guide me through the sea of configuration 
scripts, not how each of them works. Man pages are fine for each one of 
the scripts, but the man pages are not very good for the interaction of 
many scripts.

Thanks again for your help,

  Miguel


--
---
 Miguel Alvarez Blanco

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