[Pkg-sysvinit-devel] long term GNU/kFreeBSD support in sysvinit

[Robert Millan]

(CCing glibc-bsd-devel)

Hi there,

I would like to bring to your attention that, for the first time, sysvinit is
now being autobuilt by the kfreebsd-i386 buildd [1], and used in Debian
GNU/kFreeBSD without special patching.  Since the kfreebsd-i386 build of
sysvinit doesn't benefit from the careful testing you would do on an
official linux build, it is likely that a buggy sysvinit gets installed and
causes major breakage.  Since Debian GNU/kFreeBSD is being used in production,
this is something I'd like to avoid.

Please note that some of the kernel-related userland utilities are not the same
as the ones used in Debian GNU/Linux.  Some of the latter might not be present,
and some may behave slightly differently.  While we attempt to provide a
compatible CLI (by using wrapper scripts [2]), this is not always possible.

Also, for various reasons some utilities are not in the same directory as their
Linux sisters, so please avoid using hardcoded paths.

The following is a list of utilities in base that are not completely equivalent:

dmesg (supports -s via wrapper script [2])
ifconfig
mount (supports -n and "-o remount" via wrapper script [2])
netstat
route (CLI is minimaly compatible with dhclient and ifupdown requirements via wrapper
  script, but don't expect much more)
swapoff
swapon
sysctl (supports -q and -p via wrapper script [2])
umount (supports -d, -l and -r via wrapper script [2])

In case no wrapper script is used, behaviour is described in the upstream
FreeBSD manpages (available via web [4]).

A few of the GNU/Linux utilities are just missing (net-tools is not present, and
some of the unportable stuff from util-linux isn't either).  If in doubt, just
ask.

If you're going to use any of these in sysvinit, in a way that you suspect isn't
supported on GNU/kFreeBSD, I encourage you to check with us first.  If you think
a particular upload needs testing, please let us know [3] and we'll gladly give
it a check.

Thank you very much!

[1] http://unstable.buildd.net/index-kfreebsd.html
[2] http://svn.debian.org/wsvn/glibc-bsd/trunk/freebsd-utils/scripts/?rev=0&sc=0
[3] glibc-bsd-devel at lists.alioth.debian.org, or #gnu-kbsd in freenode
[4] http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi

-- 
Robert Millan