[Pkg-sysvinit-devel] Bug#546401: sysvinit/sysv-rc drops support for /etc/rc.boot

[Craig Sanders]

On Sun, Sep 20, 2009 at 10:22:48PM +0200, Petter Reinholdtsen wrote:
> [Craig Sanders]
> >> The feature has been obsolete for 10 years, the manual page have
> > 
> > no, the feature has been deprecated for use in PACKAGES for 10 years.
> 
> [Petter Reinholdtsen 2009-09-13]
> > Where do you have this idea from?  The manual page did not mention
> > anything about the features obsoleteness only affecting packages.
> > The information I found indicated that the feature itself was
> > obsolete, and this is the reason I dropped it.

it doesn't need to mention that it only affects packages. if the
intention was to affect local configuration as well as packages then
that should have been stated and highlighted.  

and if that were the intention, it should have been announced, at
minimum, by placing a README.Debian in /etc/rc.boot where it will be
noticed rather than just with a few lines changed in a man page that
isn't going to be read by people who already know the system well enough
to be using /etc/rc.boot and by sysvinit/sysv-rc's postinst scripts
noting the presence of executable scripts in /etc/rc.boot and using
debconf to display a warning, or send an email to root.

> Can you explain where you got the information that the rc.boot feature
> only have been depricated for use in packages?  I am curious what
> information is provided regarding the rc.boot feature.

common sense (i.e. the fact that debian policy only covers debian
packages, not local configuration), combined with debian's long
tradition of not messing up local sysadmin's stuff, and combined with
the fact that /etc/rc.boot is still documented in the debian FAQ.

also, there has never been an announcement that the deprecation of
/etc/rc.boot *would* effect local configuration - so the sensible
assumption is that debian is NOT going to deliberately break local
configurations.

finally, saving about half a dozen lines of shell script (hardly
"bloat") is not a good enough reason to break local configurations.


in the end, though, does it matter?

either you're restoring support for /etc/rc.boot or you're not. it
doesn't need a long, drawn out debate or conversation. you need to
decide whether to restore those half-dozen lines in /etc/rc and then act
upon that decision.


if you decide against it, i'll just make an rcboot package that restores
the functionality - although it's a bit stupid to have a package
containing just one init.d script.


craig

-- 
craig sanders <cas at taz.net.au>