Re: [gentoo-dev] /etc/init.d

[Yannick Koehler]

Matt Beland wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 11, 2002 at 01:16:45PM -0500, Yannick Koehler wrote:
>
>>Craig M. Reece wrote:
>>
>>>On Mon, Mar 11, 2002 at 12:48:08PM -0500, Yannick Koehler spoke thusly:
>>>
>>>
>>>>Guys,
>>>>
>>>>	not sure for anyone else but is init.d really need to be protected?
>>>>	I mean does someone really change files in that directory (other
>>>>	than adding or removing)?
>>>>
>>>>	That dir should always get merged.  It would also get really nice of
>>>>	the portage could detect that no changes has been made to the file
>>>>	since its installation and therefore merge it without any issues.
>>>>
>>>>	Like if the protected config file's time were saved in a temp files
>>>>	that portage would look into before merging to see if the date has
>>>>	or not change since the last install.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>Yes it needs to be protected. I, for instance, have my own version of
>>>pcmcia in there that I don't want stepped on. Also, I have a couple of
>>>other custom scripts for things not in portage yet; and when they are in
>>>portage, I want to be able to compare the differences before using one
>>>or the other.
>>>
>>The reasoning I have is that those are scripts, and not config files.
>>If ... instead of modifying pcmcia script for example like you
>>mentionned you were to cp pcmcia pcmcia.modif and rc-update add
>>pcmcia.modif default / rc-update del pcmcia default the system would
>>work and you'll never get concerned about the new pcmcia scripts.
>>
>
> They are sometimes both scripts and config files. Personally, I like the
> layout of the Gentoo initscripts, particularly with regard to the "local"
> script and the ability to start "simple" daemons and scripts with a config
> file. However, many of the scripts we add to the init.d directory are not
> custom-written for Gentoo, they're written for Linux in general. They
> include the necessary config settings in the init file itself. And those
> should not be clobbered.
>

While I understand that by having seen some of those scripts in the 
past, I don't see a reason not to either do work by removing those 
'config' part and moving them to a /etc/ file and then committing a 
patch into gentoo or the original package owner.  I'm pretty sure doing 
so wouldn't be considered gentoo either.  I've seen some distro doing 
that inside most of their init scripts in order to ensure no one play 
with them directely and kind of filtering the dangerous settings from 
the config file (always by warning the end-user thought through a log or 
something like that).

>>If you changes those scripts maybe it's even better to tell people about
>>your changes as they may get implemented such that the script itself
>>read a config files (like net.eth0) so that other people can re-use your
>>modifications.
>>
>
> That's fine for things like the tweaked pcmcia script - but what if the
> tweaks are in order to permit a specific driver to work properly? Those
> changes should not be in the default initscript, they should at most be
> provided as a commented-out section - which, again, would require user
> intervention to create the required "tweaked" script.

I don't agree here.  If you have script that make a piece of hardware 
work they should get committed inside Gentoo.  Otherwise other people 
that have the same issues won't be able to make it work either.  If it's 
  for a specific hardware combination then why making all other users 
spend their time diff/mv files while you'll be the only one with that 
problem?

Also having something like I mentionned called user.d where you could 
put your own script file would be resolving that.  Maybe even better 
would be to have gentoo write scripts by default to system.d and have 
symlink inside init.d so that if it attempt to copy a script inside 
init.d and see that it's not a  link to a system.d files then it doesn't 
override it and warn instead.  The whole idea could also be used for the 
/etc folder completely.

> It wouldn't solve the problem for custom scripts. Suppose (as an example)
> that I have installed OpenSSH by compiling it from source, then later
> I emerge the ssh ebuild. I would have installed an initscript already,
> I would call it 'sshd' by default. Before I blindly replace it with the
> Gentoo initscript, I would want to examine it and see how it did things.
>


see above

>>And maybe a user's scripts directory should exists, something like
>>/etc/user.d where people can move their custom scripts and the stuff
>>behind rc-update would got here first and if it doesn't found the script
>>then to /etc/init.d.
>>
>
> While I don't agree with everything that "the standard linux" build does,
> particularly as defined in the LSB project, I don't think we should be
> creating new directories within /etc/ just to make things a little more
> convenient. Especiually when that convenience comes with a price in the
> form of an increased risk of system breakage.

Actually I think the opposite.  Convenience for me is really important. 
  The less I have to do the more I'm happy and can do something else. 
That's why I'm complaining at the first place.  I've merge a couple of 
time baselayout and while this package shouldn't be updated frequentely 
IMHO it shouldn't be kept idle either if it can still be enhanced. 
Therefore I think to make the thing more convenient and less annyoing we 
should enhance it a little more.

Yannick Koehler