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

[Ian Jackson]

Jesse Smith writes ("Bug#586709: Think I found the problem"):
> [implementation details]

Thanks for looking at this bug.  I'm afraid I don't think I agree that
it should be closed, though.

AFAICT the user's complaint is that, when halt or poweroff actually
invoke shutdown, the actual halt/poweroff action is chosen differently
to the situation when halt or poweroff does the work itself.

That seems contrary to the behaviour described in halt(8).  So at the
very least the manpage is wrong.

However:

I took a look at halt(8), shutdown(8) and the comment in
/etc/default/halt.  Frankly, the situation is confusing and
ill-documented.  The interactions of the various options to halt, and
the various options to shutdown (which, confusingly, use some of the
same lowercase letters for different things) are not properly
explained.

I think the best solution here would *not* be to attempt to describe
the current actual behaviour in the manpages.  Rather, it would be to
try to write down what the desired behaviour would be, and then
document and implement it.

ISTM that one key principle of that desired behaviour is that the
ultimate stopping behaviour of halt/reboot/poweroff should be the
same, regardless of whether it works by calling shutdown, or by doing
the work itself right away.

> 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 necessary (which seems likely), halt(8) could leave a dropping in
/run or something to tell the init script what to do.

Thanks,
Ian.