[Pkg-sysvinit-devel] Bug#586709: Think I found the problem

[Jesse Smith]

On 10/25/18 6:00 AM, Thomas Goirand wrote:
> On 10/25/18 3:16 AM, Jesse Smith wrote:
>> I believe I found the problem here
>> [...]
> Can you provide a patch then?
>
>

Short answer: No, I don't think so because the concept of the init
scripts and related defaults prevent the user from doing what the
reporting user is trying to do. The init.d scripts, so far as I know,
don't expect parameters which is why the "defaults" files exist.

Long answer: The script is basically set up to work on auto-pilot and
use /etc/default/halt as the only way to pass in parameters. If the user
runs "halt -p -i", for example, the arguments are stripped away by the
time the script calls "/sbin/halt". I don't think the user's command
line arguments get passed to the script. (Someone please correct me if
I'm wrong, but it looks like none of the init.d scripts accept
parameters from the user.)

Which means the user needs to set expected behaviour in the
/etc/default/halt file, which is what Debian supports. This seems to be
a limitation by design to keep things streamlined and consistent. If the
user wants to poweroff instead of simply halt, they need to edit
/etc/default/halt first.

The user is basically reporting, in the above situation, that they
change the default behaviour, but then want to change it back using
another method and I don't think Debian's approach supports that. They
should just switch the default parameter back and then call halt normally.

Alternatively, the user can edit the /etc/init.d/halt file directly and
put a "-p" at the end of the command, but that will get overwritten by
future updates and it would run counter to the default behaviour they
specified in the first place.

Basically, everything is working "as expected", it's just that the
init.d scripts do not (as far as I know) accept command line arguments
from the end user.