From owner-freebsd-ports Thu Sep 21 04:22:35 1995 Return-Path: owner-ports Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.6.12/8.6.6) id EAA03688 for ports-outgoing; Thu, 21 Sep 1995 04:22:35 -0700 Received: from shell.monmouth.com (pechter@shell.monmouth.com [205.164.220.1]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.6.12/8.6.6) with ESMTP id EAA03683 for ; Thu, 21 Sep 1995 04:22:33 -0700 Received: (from pechter@localhost) by shell.monmouth.com (8.6.12/8.6.12) id HAA11721; Thu, 21 Sep 1995 07:24:33 -0400 From: Bill/Carolyn Pechter Message-Id: <199509211124.HAA11721@shell.monmouth.com> Subject: Re: ports startup scripts To: patl@asimov.volant.org Date: Thu, 21 Sep 1995 07:24:32 -0400 (EDT) Cc: ports@freebsd.org In-Reply-To: <9509210406.AA21520@asimov.volant.org> from "patl@asimov.volant.org" at Sep 20, 95 09:06:25 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] Content-Type: text Content-Length: 2599 Sender: owner-ports@freebsd.org Precedence: bulk > I suspect that most of the problem with the SVr4/Solaris/HP-UX startup > script system is poor documentation. And a lot of the people complaining > are really complaining about the change, not the actual result. Any > change we make will suffer from that, no matter how good it is. It's not documentation. See the Nemeth Sysadmin book Edition 2 (the red cover)... The yellow one documented the run levels with SVR2 (I think). Actually, it appears to be a cultural problem. Since there's no standard "Unix" -- there's really two -- BSD and SYSTEM V you get the one true Unix religious bigotry. I've worked with both. I've been the sysadmin on SunOS, HP-UX, Solaris 2.4, DC/OSx (SysVR4), OS/X (which had available both the AT&T and BSD init and the Sys Admin would install EITHER ONE based on preferences at the site). (Actually the capability to support both ways wouldn't be bad here... how about keeping the old BSD init method as an option) At Pyramid's NJ training facility we noticed the following... The Sys V method was pushed heavily in my classes as the method with the most customization... However my office ran with the BSD init -- since the rest of the office learned UNIX on the west coast -- while the bunch of folks who came out of the telcom business here (ex-AT&T and Bellcore folks) ran with the SysV setup. > > You make it sound like the folks working on FreeBSD would make changes > just to be different from SYSV. I sincerely hope that is not the case. > We should strive to produce the best unix-derived system that we can; > but vigorously fight the Not Invented Here syndrome. If somebody else > has a better solution than the one we are using, we should feel perfectly > free to adopt it. Or, if we can, improve it further. Agreed... it looks like the argument comes down to NIH and that SysV's startup complicates things more than the BSD /etc/rc /etc/rc.local does. However, a new user editing rc or rc.local and screwing up can cause a lot of problems. I had to fix another admin's SunOS 4.1.3 machine when he screwed it up so bad that the shared libraries weren't mounted. I think we should go the SVR4 route and I'm willing to document it... (Amazing that echo * isn't taught as a replacement for ls these days)... Bill ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bill Pechter/Carolyn Pechter | The postmaster always pings twice. Lakewood MicroSystems | 17 Meredith Drive, 908-389-3592 | Tinton Falls, NJ 07724 pechter@shell.monmouth.com |