[Pkg-sysvinit-devel] The future of non-dependency-based boot

[Roger Leigh]

Hi,

When dependency-based booting was introduced, it was initially
entirely optional.  We later made it the default, and encouraged
users to switch to dependency-based boot on upgrade.  So today,
pretty much everyone will be using dependency-based boot with
there being a minority continuing to use the static boot ordering
of yore.  Probably mostly users who upgraded from etch.

The reason for this mail is mainly to ask if there is any
continuing need for the old static ordering to be kept, and if
not, how best to migrate the remaining users.  With all other
init systems worth their salt requiring dependencies, should
sysvinit not do the same?

Now that all (?) init scripts provide LSB headers, the existing
static ordering will increasingly bitrot.  It was never that great
to begin with, but with dependency ordering being used by the vast
majority, it's going to be increasingly untested.  Do we want to
continue to maintain something that will be increasingly
unsupportable, or complete the migration cleanly before that point?

WRT actually doing this, the main issues I can see are
- blocking by obsolete-but-unpurged init scripts without LSB header.
  We could mv them out of the way to .dpkg-old and continue, or
  abort and require manual intervention.
- breakage of any non-LSB scripts remain after this.  We could
  abort in the preinst and prevent upgrade until it's manually
  resolved, unless there's a cleaner way to handle it.
Obviously, we don't want to make any systems unbootable, but doing
it without any manual intervention where possible would be
desirable.

This can, of course, be left until wheezy+1.  It's just something
which needs considering before it becomes a bigger problem.


Regards,
Roger

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