[Pkg-sysvinit-devel] Bug#673207: /etc/default/rcS is perhaps a better place for FANCYTTY variable

[Roger Leigh]

On Fri, May 18, 2012 at 10:00:12PM +0200, Didier Raboud wrote:
> Hi Stanislav, and thanks for your bugreport, 
> (CC'ing the sysvinit maintainers),
> 
> Le jeudi, 17 mai 2012 00.19:38, vous avez écrit :
> > Perhaps, /etc/default/rcS could be a better place for setting FANCYTTY
> > variable, because this place is documented (man rcS) and also there is
> > a variable VERBOSE that has a similar purpose and is defined in this
> > file. The file /etc/default/rcS also exists by default on the newly
> > installed Debian, and, thus, changing the way how the messages are
> > displayed can be less confusing for users.
> > 
> > Evidently, if you decide to use /etc/default/rcS for this setting,
> > this file should *not* be simply sourced from /lib/lsb/init-functions.
> > Instead, you may use something like
> > 
> > FANCYTTY=$([ -e /etc/default/rcS ] && . /etc/default/rcS && echo $FANCYTTY)
> 
> After an initial perplexity, I think I now quite like this idea. From the rcS 
> manpage: "rcS - variables that affect the behavior of boot scripts", so it 
> would be a good fit for /etc/default/rcS.
> 
> Given that /etc/default/rcS is managed by initscripts (from src:sysvinit), I'm 
> hereby asking the sysvinit maintainers: what do you think?

One problem right now is that /etc/default/rcS is not a conffile, and
is never upgraded after the initial install.  Adding the option would
only make it available for new installs.

[Note: the version in testing/unstable was changed to use ucf, but
it's likely this will be reverted in the next upload, restoring the
historical never-updated behaviour.]

Note that conincidentally, the next util-linux update (today, once
I've finished testing) will remove the UTC setting from this file,
which was the primary reason it couldn't be made a conffile.  So it's
possible it might become a conffile again in the future if people
don't object to the idea.


Regards,
Roger

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