[Pkg-sysvinit-devel] How to configure a system to avoid services from being started

[Marc Haber]

Hi,

when I discuss Debian's advantages and disadvantages with
colleagues and peers, one thing inevitably keeps popping up: Some
people do not want the distribution to not start services after
package installation that have not been explicitly enabled. This is,
btw, an additional reason why people keep adding "START_DAEMON"
variables to their /etc/default/$PACKAGE files, defaulting to "no".

What is the recommended way to achive this behavior on a Debian system
through local configuration? It would mean the following:

- Prevent a new service from being started at package installation.
  This can be done with policy-rc.d
- Prevent start links from being created. This should be done
  automatically, and I would prefer this to be done by an extension to
  update-rc.d which would not create and start links in this mode of
  operation. Optionally
  - update-rc.d would save the run levels that the maintainer wanted
    his service to start in, so that the local admin can later accept
    the maintainer's proposal.
  - update-rc.d would support local configuration to select which
    packages are allowed to establish start scripts (a white list) or
    which packages are forbidden from establishing start scripts (a
    black list).
- The local admin should then have the possibility to start the
  service nevertheless and configure the system that the service is
  allowed to come up during package upgrades and reboots.

Is there any possibility to have this behavior with the current
software, or is a wishlist bug report in order?

Greetings
Marc

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