[Pkg-sysvinit-devel] Bug#543813: VERBOSE=no is incorrectly set when init scripts are run at command line or on upgrade

[Joey Hess]

Package: sysvinit
Version: 2.87dsf-2+b1
Severity: normal

I've found several daemons (privoxy, fuse) whose init scripts no longer
output anything when run. 

root at gnu:~>/etc/init.d/privoxy stop    
root at gnu:~>/etc/init.d/privoxy start
root at gnu:~>

This is not reassuring behavior; it violates user expectations; it
violates policy, which says that init scripts should say what they're
doing; it makes it non-obvious if privoxy started, or why not (messages
about /etc/default/privoxy are suppressed). And it's based on
/lib/init/vars.sh setting VERBOSE=no if the kernel was booted with
quiet, which is the default for all desktop installs for some time now.

It doesn't seem right for a kernel boot option to affect random
user-space scripts run at the command line.

It doesn't seem good that multiple daemons are being modified to use
this, and that /etc/init.d/skeleton encourages it.

It's decidedly fishy that userspace overloads the meaning of a kernel boot
option at all. I don't remember this being the plan when we made desktop
installs boot with quiet by default.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: squeeze/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'testing')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.31-rc3-486
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash

Versions of packages sysvinit depends on:
ii  initscripts                 2.87dsf-2+b1 scripts for initializing and shutt
ii  libc6                       2.9-25       GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii  libselinux1                 2.0.85-1     SELinux shared libraries
ii  libsepol1                   2.0.37-1     Security Enhanced Linux policy lib
ii  sysv-rc                     2.87dsf-2    System-V-like runlevel change mech
ii  sysvinit-utils              2.87dsf-2+b1 System-V-like utilities

sysvinit recommends no packages.

sysvinit suggests no packages.

-- no debconf information

-- 
see shy jo
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