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Date:      Wed, 23 Dec 2009 00:21:20 +0000 (UTC)
From:      Jason Spiro <jasonspiro4@gmail.com>
To:        freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Suggestion: rename "killall" to "fkill", but wait five years to phase the new name in
Message-ID:  <loom.20091223T011229-464@post.gmane.org>
References:  <c241693f0912212231g5c380246kf12f7bde974bb734@mail.gmail.com> <alpine.BSF.2.00.0912221409400.21806@qvfongpu.5c.ybpny>	<loom.20091222T230421-82@post.gmane.org> <a78074950912221434i36be337co7ee1f9ad6bb5c921@mail.gmail.com> <c241693f0912221454o1a6bd54v7e1d7afb2694a9e2@mail.gmail.com> <4B315A5A.6040101@delphij.net>

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Xin LI <delphij <at> delphij.net> writes:

> killall can be used by scripts which just works in the past, and will 
> never notice the warnings.

On what scripts will nobody notice the warnings?  For example, AFAIK, cron job
output is always mailed to root.  The only scripts I can think of are scripts
called by web applications like PHP, and I can't think of any concrete case
where they would run killall.

> Also, killall is not "that" dangerous on 
> FreeBSD, we should ONLY give warnings when it's really necessary, 
> otherwise users would just ignore all warnings we gave to them.
> 
> On the other hand, it seems to us that warning messages won't work, no 
> matter how long we give it, it is being ignored by a majority of users.

Good points.

> Then users are already familiar with FreeBSD would have to learn what 
> "fkill" is, and after all, having them to pay for mistakes made by 
> commercial Unix vendors does not seem to be a fair option.

As I wrote elsewhere[1] in this thread, it seems to me the commercial vendors
made no mistakes here; only Linux and FreeBSD made mistakes.

> Well, I'd say it's too late for us to change since it's several years 
> after we have 'killall' our way.

I replied to this in the last paragraph of text in [1].

> pkill have '-I', at least on FreeBSD...

There is no such option in pkill on Linux.[2]

^  [1].  http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.os.freebsd.devel.hackers/38308/focus=38332
^  [2].  http://linux.die.net/man/1/pkill




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