[Pkg-sysvinit-devel] Bug#531207: initscripts: modes of execution for services

[Ritesh Raj Sarraf]

Package: initscripts
Version: 2.86.ds1-61
Severity: wishlist

Hi,
This is a wishlist request which I think might require an amendment in
the Debian Policy.

Currently, many of the services in a Debian installation are single
mode. By "single mode", I mean they are always running daemons. There do
are some (like exim), which are offered at install time, if a user wants to run them
from inted.

My proposal is that we have the init system with a machine type
identifier.
Example:
MACHINE=laptop

Currently, on my machine, I have many services running stand-alone as a
daemon. Example: cupsd. In a laptop/desktop environment, we don't do
regular printing. There is room for efficiency by providing the user
with an option to let as many daemons as possible, to be run from inetd.

This has a benefit. Especially for memory resources.
The dictionary server, dictd, is another example. Previously, it was
available as a standalone server. With multiple dictionary databases
installed, I noticed that memory consumption could rise to around
100Megs. So, in standalone mode, ditcd alone would be consuming a 100Meg
resource.

d-i currently does detect hardware type during installation. We should
have a global system variable defining the type of machine. And then, we
should have a policy stating, "Every application, if possible to
inet-ize, should have that option."
And then that could be triggered with the global system variable.

crond
dictd
many more daemons....

For laptop/destkop, we can save a lot of memory resource this way.


Thanks,
Ritesh

-- System Information:
Debian Release: squeeze/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (990, 'testing'), (500, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.29-custom (SMP w/1 CPU core; PREEMPT)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages initscripts depends on:
ii  debianutils                  3.1.3       Miscellaneous utilities specific t
ii  e2fsprogs                    1.41.3-1    ext2/ext3/ext4 file system utiliti
ii  libc6                        2.9-12      GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii  lsb-base                     3.2-22      Linux Standard Base 3.2 init scrip
ii  mount                        2.13.1.1-1  Tools for mounting and manipulatin
ii  sysvinit-utils               2.86.ds1-61 System-V-like utilities

Versions of packages initscripts recommends:
ii  psmisc                        22.7-1     utilities that use the proc file s

initscripts suggests no packages.

-- no debconf information