[Pkg-sysvinit-devel] Bug#669406: sysv-rc: Optimization in /etc/init.d/rc not to stop some services should be removed, or better documented

[Ralf Jung]

Package: sysv-rc
Version: 2.88dsf-22.1
Severity: normal

Dear Maintainer,

There are some services I have installed on my development and work machine
because I sometimes need them (like mysql or apache), but I disabled automatic
startup because having them running on my laptop all the time would be a total
waste of resources. I used "update-rc.d <service> disable" to achieve that, and
it generally works fine.

However, when I shut down my PC, even if mysql is running (because I started it
manually), it is not properly shut down. I was severely confused, because
/etc/init.d/README and the parts of the policy referenced by them clearly say
that all scripts in the /etc/rc{0,6}.d/ folders starting with "K" are called
with a "stop" argument when entering these runlevels, and of course the
K02mysql files were present. It took me a while to find out that the policy is
actually wrong, due to an "optimization" in /etc/init.d/rc not to stop a
service if the previous runlevel already had it stopped.
This should at least be properly documented in the policy, if the behaviour of
sysv-rc can not reasonably be changed to properly implement the current policy.

Kind regards,
Ralf



-- System Information:
Debian Release: wheezy/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 3.2.0-2-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_GB.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages sysv-rc depends on:
ii  debconf [debconf-2.0]  1.5.42
ii  insserv                1.14.0-2.2
ii  sysvinit-utils         2.88dsf-22.1

Versions of packages sysv-rc recommends:
ii  lsb-base  4.1+Debian0

Versions of packages sysv-rc suggests:
pn  bum           <none>
pn  sysv-rc-conf  <none>

-- debconf information:
  sysv-rc/unable-to-convert:
  sysv-rc/convert-legacy: true