[Pkg-sysvinit-devel] Bug#406685: initscripts: RAMRUN, RAMLOCK vars/opts are undocumented

[Petter Reinholdtsen]

[Paolo]
> no, this was a freshly netinstall'd notebook, kept in sync with Etch
> once a week at min. While I can't recall all opts taken in all
> steps, I'm sure I didn't go too fancy - I'm not used to mount even
> /tmp as tmpfs - but the result currently I have is:

Very strange.  What is the content of your /etc/default/rcS and
/usr/share/initscripts/default.rcS ?  All should list 'no' as the
setting for these options.

> anyway, whether an install glitch or just me falling asleep on
> intall/ config, is a secondary point, main one is that RAMRUN - ie
> /var/run on tmpfs - and perhaps others, doesn't look like an
> acceptable option in Etch current, as too many pkgs don't expect
> volatile dirs under /var/run hence fail on (re)boot.

Well, mounting /var/run/ and /var/lock/ as tmpfs has been expected to
work in Debian for a long time, and the packages failing to handle it
are broken.  But not many people have added these mount points to
/etc/fstab, and thus bugs in many packages have been undetected.

> Respective maintainers seems quite reluctant to address that by
> hacking their init.d/ scripts. Case in point was clamav-daemon,
> which didn't start on boot, expecting /var/run/clamav/ to be already
> there. Same for virus-DB updater freshclam.

Well, these packages need to fix their init.d scripts.

Having /var/run/ and /var/lock/ (as well as /tmp/) on tmpfs is a big
advantage for laptops running on batteries, as well as stateless
workstations and diskless thin clients, and all of these
configurations need to be properly supported in Debian.

The RAMRUN and RAMLOCK options are disabled by default because some
packages will break if it is enabled, but provided as an option for
the sysadmins interested in using them to increase the lifetime of
their laptops or interested in running diskless machines.  These
sysadmins will for now have to verify that all the packages they are
using are able to cope with the options, but I hope in the future we
can enable it by default for laptops and ltsp clients.

Friendly,
-- 
Petter Reinholdtsen