[Pkg-sysvinit-devel] The inittab interface - Re: Bug#766187: runit: Fails to install runit after fresh install of jessie beta2

[Henrique de Moraes Holschuh]

On Thu, 11 Dec 2014, Gerrit Pape wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 09, 2014 at 11:24:11AM +0000, Gerrit Pape wrote:
> > On Mon, Nov 24, 2014 at 10:08:49PM +0000, Simon McVittie wrote:
> > > On 24/11/14 21:41, Gerrit Pape wrote:
> > > > Better than (2) would be to make the existence of /etc/inittab still
> > > > essential for jessie, by moving the corresponding code from
> > > > sysvinit-core into the essential init package.  What do you think?
> > > 
> > > If you go this route, I think initscripts might be a better home for
> > 
> > As I wrote above, I actually don't have the time to go any road at all.
> > 
> > The packages worked just fine until I learnt that support for the
> > inittab interface is dropped in jessie.  I fixed the packages.  Now I
> > learnt that the existence of /etc/inittab is no longer essential, next
> > thing breaking my packages - when switching jessie to sysvinit.
> > 
> > Please advise whether I should reassign this release critically to the
> > init and sysvinit packages, or upload the ugly workaround to copy
> > sysvinit maintainer script code for generating /etc/inittab into the two
> > affected packages.
> 
> Hi init and sysvinit maintainers, it looks like I don't get reasonable
> advise on debian-devel.
> 
> What is your stand on this?

You *are* allowed to create /etc/inittab when it is missing.  Especially if
you're creating it exactly like sysvinit would do it, which means the system
will not become unusable if the user attempts to switch to something that
needs /etc/inittab to run initscripts or to start getty-like terminal
handling.

If *that* is the only thing getting in the way, I don't see any problems.

We should fix it better later, though, it is not a good idea to have code to
generate /etc/inittab in several packages in the long run: they will
eventually diverge.

-- 
  "One disk to rule them all, One disk to find them. One disk to bring
  them all and in the darkness grind them. In the Land of Redmond
  where the shadows lie." -- The Silicon Valley Tarot
  Henrique Holschuh