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Date:      Wed, 29 Mar 1995 02:03:15 -0800 (PST)
From:      "Rodney W. Grimes" <rgrimes@gndrsh.aac.dev.com>
To:        jkh@freefall.cdrom.com (Jordan K. Hubbard)
Cc:        bde@zeta.org.au, freebsd-bugs@freefall.cdrom.com, pst@shockwave.com
Subject:   Re: Changed information for PR misc/278
Message-ID:  <199503291003.CAA01968@gndrsh.aac.dev.com>
In-Reply-To: <12916.796469126@freefall.cdrom.com> from "Jordan K. Hubbard" at Mar 29, 95 01:25:26 am

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> 
> > /etc/netstart is bloated and broken.  It used to be possible to run
> > it independently of /etc/rc.  This was useful for starting network
> > interfaces from the single user shell.  Now it wants to start lots
> > of network daemons from unmounted partitions.
> 
> Well, it also seems to be something of a sacred cow around here and I
> got flamed when I tried to significantly alter it.  I've really no
> immediate idea as to how to restructure the thing, and there's a lot
> to be said for adding a `NETWORKED=[yes|no]' that possibly even turns
> most of this stuff OFF for situations where the machine *isn't even on
> a network and never will be*.  Has anyone stopped to consider this
> case?  We've always just barreled along and never even really given
> the user the opportunity to easily deselect what might be an entirely
> gratuitous set of daemons..
> 
> Sigh..  I think it must be said: Most of /etc is a mess, it always has
> been a mess and all I've ever seen other operating systems do with it
> is make it a more *convoluted* mess (SVR4 - gag me!).  What's the
> cool, killer paradigm shift we're missing here? :-)

As distributed up until the recent attempt at cleaning this up /etc/rc
and /etc/netstart did just about the right thing for a machine with
no actual network attachment.

A lot of the daemons started are not just for internet connected machines,
BSD itself wants atleast the loopback device running so things like
syslogd can work.  We do need to add the knobs to turn any of these
off if so desired, and set the default states to something reasonable.

I think we need to intergrate what I just read as a patch submission
from Paul Tarina (I am going to do it as soon as I finish my mail
reading and test it locally if some one has not already beaten me
to it) as it cleans up all the bugs recently introduced, and adds
at least one I spotted.

Then a few more knobs need added to /etc/sysconfig so we can do things
like enable the ``route add $hostname localhost'' in /etc/netstart
without editing netstart itself, etc.

I have written for Domain/OS a set of /etc/rc scripts that work
well for that environment and they work similiarly to what we have
now with the /etc/sysconfig being replaced by a node specific file
that lives in /etc/daemons (a variant symbolic link).  The environment
on Domain/OS is about 10x more complicated than what FreeBSD has as
it is a tri universe (Aegis, SYS5 and BSD4.3) OS, but the model works,
and works very well.

Having /etc/netstart usable from single user mode to pull you up
on the network but not start up any servers is functionality we
need to keep!!


-- 
Rod Grimes                                      rgrimes@gndrsh.aac.dev.com
Accurate Automation Company                   Custom computers for FreeBSD



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