From owner-freebsd-current Fri Aug 16 13:11:35 1996 Return-Path: owner-current Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id NAA12517 for current-outgoing; Fri, 16 Aug 1996 13:11:35 -0700 (PDT) Received: from phaeton.artisoft.com (phaeton.Artisoft.COM [198.17.250.211]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with SMTP id NAA12502 for ; Fri, 16 Aug 1996 13:11:21 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from terry@localhost) by phaeton.artisoft.com (8.6.11/8.6.9) id NAA03242; Fri, 16 Aug 1996 13:04:20 -0700 From: Terry Lambert Message-Id: <199608162004.NAA03242@phaeton.artisoft.com> Subject: Re: Opinions? NT VS UNIX, NT SUCKS SOMETIMES To: mark@plato.ucsalf.ac.uk (Mark Powell) Date: Fri, 16 Aug 1996 13:04:20 -0700 (MST) Cc: freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG In-Reply-To: from "Mark Powell" at Aug 16, 96 08:35:11 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-current@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > >In the registry: > > > >My Computer\ > > HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ > > SOFTWARE\ > > Microsoft\ > > Windows\ > > CurrentVersion\ > > RunServices > > > >Edit > > New -> String Value > > MyAgent "C:\path_to_my-agent.exe" > > > >Will start a program each time the NT system starts. It's a bit more > >flexible than editing /etc/rc* on BSD. > > That's meant to be sarcastic, right? NT more flexible than BSD, in *any* > way? I've used UNIX, Netware and NT. I don't think the latter can really > claim to be a NOS. Probably forget the N there as well. In BSD, I can add service A by appending to /etc/rc.local during install. I can then add service B by doing the same thing. Now I want to deinstall service A... I am screwed because: 1) I can't stop the service by name unless it's exactly one process, or I do a whole lot of work that has to be duplicated over and over for each package because the support infrastructure is non-existent. 2) I can't automatically hack the file, because I may not have tagged the file in such a way that it's editable, and since we allow users to hack the file as well as allowing install scripts to hack the file, we can never be sure that we would be removing the right thing anyway. 3) I can't automatically start the service in the same way that I would start the service on system initialization without a reboot, because the start "script" is now homogenized into the rc.local and forever unuasable on a per item basis. Conclusion: the rc file crap is just that, crap, regardless of our historical love affair with it as being "the BSD way". Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.