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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!feed1.news.erols.com!news.bbnplanet.com!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!EU.net!Germany.EU.net!Dortmund.Germany.EU.net!interface-business.de!usenet From: j@ida.interface-business.de (J Wunsch) Newsgroups: comp.unix.solaris,comp.unix.bsd.misc,comp.unix.internals,comp.unix.osf.osf1 Subject: Re: SysV init [Was: Solaris 2.6] Date: 11 Dec 1996 10:44:59 GMT Organization: interface business GmbH, Dresden Lines: 47 Distribution: inet Message-ID: <58m3bb$hju@innocence.interface-business.de> References: <32986299.AC7@mail.esrin.esa.it> <casper.329abb76@mail.fwi.uva.nl> <x7917mx5gx.fsf@dumbcat.codewright.com> <57shh0$o3u@web.nmti.com> <58bdl4$g68@spitfire.ecsel.psu.edu> <58ccqm$q13@web.nmti.com> <58hj11$bb6@panix.com> <58hs93$h63@web.nmti.com> <58invm$s4b@abyss.west.sun.com> <58k7hn$nur@web.nmti.com> Reply-To: joerg_wunsch@interface-business.de (Joerg Wunsch) NNTP-Posting-Host: ida.interface-business.de X-Newsreader: knews 0.9.6 X-Phone: +49-351-31809-14 X-Fax: +49-351-3361187 X-PGP-Fingerprint: DC 47 E6 E4 FF A6 E9 8F 93 21 E0 7D F9 12 D6 4E Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.solaris:92251 comp.unix.bsd.misc:1779 comp.unix.internals:11575 comp.unix.osf.osf1:16999 peter@nmti.com (Peter da Silva) wrote: (Should we reduce the followup line?) > Go ask the NetBSD core team about my horrible System V boosterism some time. > I dropped out of there after getting thoroughly spanked for offering to > provide a System V init clone. Maybe they're right... though I've noticed > they're splitting up /etc/rc too these days. There's some good stuff in > System V (and hooray for DEC for recognising that and sticking a System V > init in Digital UNIX). The SysV init has good and bad sides. While i think the idea is not too bad, i have yet to see a single SysV that does all state transitions right, e.g. where it doesn't tell you ``Starting foobar service...'' when you tell it to go down from run-level 3 to 2, or ``Stopping mumblefritz'' when you upgrade from S to 1. So in short, i think 7 or 8 run-levels are plain overkill. Nobody gets all state transitions right, and among all the SysV vendors, there's heavy disagreement whether a system should boot by default into level 2, 3 or even 4 (HP). With ``by default'', i mean what's needed to get the system into a normal useful state, similar to BSD's multi-user level (networking intact, xdm etc. running). If you cut down the SysV idea to run-levels single-user, multi- user (*), halt, and reboot, i'm all for it. (*) Maybe two levels of multi-user, one with and one without networking. OTOH, this will already start you getting into the described state-transition troubles. And, i rather love the BSD idea where you can simply call /etc/netstart (however you might name it) even from single-user, and get full networking client abilities. Note that this is still very different from SysV's run-level 2, and i had problems to achieve something roughly similar on those SysV's i've been working with. This might however be rather related to the STREAMS TCP/IP implementations rather than to problems with their init scripts. Perhaps, /etc/netstart should better be named /etc/rc.d/net then, and accept the usual `start' and `stop' arguments. (One could provide an /etc/netstart calling ``/etc/rc.d/net start'' for those who are used to the old naming.) -- J"org Wunsch Unix support engineer joerg_wunsch@interface-business.de http://www.interface-business.de/~j