From owner-freebsd-hackers Tue Jul 15 05:15:32 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id FAA23322 for hackers-outgoing; Tue, 15 Jul 1997 05:15:32 -0700 (PDT) Received: from aaka.3skel.com (aaka.3skel.com [207.240.134.73]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id FAA23316 for ; Tue, 15 Jul 1997 05:15:27 -0700 (PDT) Received: from fnur.3skel.com (fnur.3skel.com [192.168.0.8]) by aaka.3skel.com (8.8.5/8.8.2) with ESMTP id IAA06493 for ; Tue, 15 Jul 1997 08:15:24 -0400 (EDT) Received: from fnur.3skel.com (fnur.3skel.com [192.168.0.8]) by fnur.3skel.com (8.8.5/8.8.2) with ESMTP id IAA02098 for ; Tue, 15 Jul 1997 08:15:23 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <33CB69DA.9B1052@3skel.com> Date: Tue, 15 Jul 1997 08:15:22 -0400 From: Dan Janowski Organization: Triskelion Systems, Inc. X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.0b5C (X11; I; FreeBSD 2.2.1-RELEASE i386) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: multiple run-levels (was: Re: /etc/init.d/) X-Priority: 3 (Normal) References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk Hi All, A multiple runlevel mechanism provides some benefits, but most of them are secondary. The runlevel part is mostly smoke. The benefits are that each class or group of programs/processes has its own shell script for initialization. This is a LOT like the way we have stuff in /usr/local/etc/rc.d. The other stuff, concerning what services should be started if you are at init 2 instead of init 3 is more complicated than what a "runlevel" can address. A long time ago, when I was younger, I wrote an entire runlevel and init.d/rc?.d system for Linux based on IRIX. There were only two things that were of any use: 1. At the boot loader prompt you could set a variable (LOCALE) that was available to the rc scripts that would allow the employment of location based control of what services should/shouldn't, network interfaces... 2. chkconfig, which is an IRIX particular rc mechanism that allows one to type 'chkconfig timed off' at a prompt, and the next time you go to a multiuser state, timed would not be started. This meant that no actual file editing was necessary. To REALLY be useful, a mechanism has to be able to change resolv.conf, host.conf, hosts, ifconfigs, fstabs (for local and NFS), libsocks.conf, routes, etc. All kinds of crap really. Init.d ain't gonna do it. Another mechanism can be designed and implemented, but it isn't really going to look like anything that we've seen before. Dan -- danj@3skel.com Dan Janowski Triskelion Systems, Inc. Bronx, NY