Re: update-rc.d

[Ernest Johanson <ejohan@fuller.edu>]

One suggestion here might be to put an exit statement on a line by itself
near the beginning of the script, before anything is executed. This will
prevent the script from running even though the rc.d links are in
place. When you update the package, the install script should detect
that the init script was modified and ask you if you want to keep your
current version of the script or use the new one. That way you don't have
to reconfigure the links.

Hope this is helpful 


Ernest Johanson
Systems Administrator
Fuller Theological Seminary


On Wed, 12 Nov 2003, Miguel Alvarez Blanco wrote:

> Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 12:42:57 +0100
> From: Miguel Alvarez Blanco <miguel@carbono.quimica.uniovi.es>
> To: debian-user@lists.debian.org
> Subject: update-rc.d
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I do not really know if this is a bug or a "feature", so I am not 
> sending it as a bug report. The problem is fairly general, it has 
> happened several times to me, although the last one was because of the 
> ipmasq package.
> 
> I had the package installed in my system while I was using it to provide 
> net access to another machine while on a single-IP net connection, but I 
> no longer used it, so I just used update-rc.d to remove the links in 
> rcS.d and avoid it running at startup. I did not want to erase it, since 
> the machine is a laptop and I  may need it again sometime (I prefer not 
> to remove packages, because I may need them in a circumstance in which I 
> do not have net access).
> 
> However, it seems that there was some update in the woody package (maybe 
> security related) in the last months, and so I automatically upgraded 
> it. The update re-installed the scripts in rcS.d, but since I did not 
> shut down the machine for some time, I did not notice it. Yesterday, I 
> had to boot windoze to use the parallel port scanner (pity it does not 
> work with sane or vmware), and after reboot I had no net connection. 
> Now, it took me some time to realize that evverything was right in the 
> net scripts, until I went to look with iptables, and notice that the 
> ipmasq script was there again.
> 
> Sure, it took me less than five minutes to remove the script again and 
> put everything in order, but I think that it is annoying. So, this is my 
> question: is there another way of keeping a package around without it 
> actually updating the startup scripts whenever it is upgraded? If not, 
> it may be that some "update-rc.d record" file should be kept, in order 
> not to change back startup files that the sysadmin may have modified or 
> erased for some reason. As I said, it has happened several times, so 
> this is not an isolated problem of the ipmasq package, but rather 
> something in the general usage of the Debian system (which I really like 
> in most other respects: brilliant job!). If I am missing something, 
> please do tell me, preferably by answering this e-mail (I will follow-up 
> to the list to keep everyone informed).
> 
> Thanks,
> 
>    Miguel
> 
> -- 
> ---
>   Miguel Alvarez Blanco
> 
>   E-mail:    miguel@carbono.quimica.uniovi.es
>   HomePage:  http://web.uniovi.es/qcg/mab/miguel.html
>   Mail: Dpto. Quimica Fisica y Analitica, Universidad de Oviedo.
>         Facultad de Quimica, c/ Julian Claveria, 8. 33006-Oviedo, Spain.
>   Phone: +34 98510 5017  Fax: +34 98510 3125  Dpt.Office: +34 98510 3034
> 
> UNIX is user friendly. It's just selective about who its friends are.
>