[Pkg-sysvinit-devel] Bug#345719: Please remove pointless runlevel restriction on telinit u

[Dana How]

Package: sysvinit
Version: 2.86.ds1-6

Around Feb 1998, the "telinit u" feature was added to the sysvinit package.
This allowed a running /sbin/init to be updated (re-executed after
re-installing).

There are other situations where it would be useful to re-exec /sbin/init .
Midway through a boot from CDROM or other ro media,
or during a shutdown when the entire system is running from removable media,
such as CDROM, USB key, or CF, and we need to continue running reliably
for a short period after the media is removed.

Anyway, "telinit u" could be used in each of these cases,
except it has a check which causes it to do nothing when in runlevels 0 and 6.
I looked around in the source code and the original change logs,
and could find no reason for this restriction,
other than it was consistent with the original purpose of including "telinit u".

I have attached a trivial patch which permits re-exec in runlevels 0 and 6.
This has been tested, on both harddrive and CDROM-based instances.

Thanks,
--
Dana L. How  danahow at gmail.com  +1 650 804 5991 cell
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