[Pkg-sysvinit-devel] Bug#761878: Bug#761878: sysv-rc: policy-rc.d should live under /etc

[Ansgar Burchardt]

Henrique de Moraes Holschuh <hmh at debian.org> writes:
> On Tue, 16 Sep 2014, Ansgar Burchardt wrote:
>> policy-rc.d is supposed to be configured (and thus edited) by the
>> local admin. It should thus not live in /usr/sbin.
>
> It is supposed to be supplied under the Debian alternatives subsystem or
> something equivalent, which will install a symlink there.  In fact, it will
> install a symlink to /etc/alternatives/policy-rc.d, which will be another
> symlink there to the active "alternative".

But nobody ever does that.

> The /usr/sbin/policy-rc.d symlink would be created and managed by the
> packages providing policy-rc.d, through /usr/sbin/update-alternatives.  The
> local admin can do the same if he wants.  Or he can just add a real file in
> /usr/sbin/policy-rc.d, and update-alternatives should leave it alone.
>
> Nobody ever found a reason to package a general-use policy-rc.d, although
> the feature is directly used by some tools that create private chroots, such
> as pbuilder.

That's the most common use (also by d-i as far as I remember). And
sometimes people write their own policy-rc.d.

In all cases, it's a configuration choice and not shipped by a package,
and so belongs below /etc.

>> Please support using a policy-rc.d located under /etc (and leave
>> /usr/sbin/policy-rc.d as a legacy location).
>
> AFAIK, there is no strong technical reason to change the policy-rc.d ABI at
> this time, so I will downgrade this to wishlist and tag it wontfix.

Well, it doesn't break any old use. It's an ABI-compatible change ;)

Ansgar