Re: Disabling some services indivually and easily (nut)

[schaefer@alphanet.ch (Marc SCHAEFER)]

Summary:

   I wanted an administratively easy way to disable a service from
   running, something that could be specified at the LILO or GRUB boot
   prompt.

   I proposed to disable this service in run level 3, while still
   leaving it running at level 2. This would mean disabling the service
   would be as easy as adding a `3' at the end of the command line

   I was however concerned that this method would not really be
   maintainable, nor very practical if there are many services to
   disable independantly (I would quickly run out of usable run levels).

   (my practical question was about nut doing an immediate shutdown of
    the machine when the UPS cable was not connected; which would mean
    that in case of failure of the UPS, starting the system would be
    impossible without an in-field manipulation of the system rc2.d
    directory. I didn't find any easy way to configure nut to act
    specially on the system boot, thus this idea of service disabling).

Suggestions given:

   - remove the /etc/rc2.d/S*nut

        okay, but this is regarded as complex, you don't want non
        savvy system-administrators to remove random files in the
        system

   - use the level 3 modification

        works, is quite easy, but is not reallys scalable, and you need
        to know in advance what services are going to break for some
        reason.

So, another idea I had:

   - add a disable-service=serv1,serv2,... kernel command line that
     would be parsed by some Debian service at boot and would temporarily
     disable the rc.d runner script from starting those services

Would that be a good idea ?