Patrick Schoenfeld wrote: > Hi, > > currently we seem to have no clear policy in Debian how to handle > the question: "Shall a service started once its installed or not?" > The current state of affairs is that some packages start after beeing > installed, some don't, because they don't have a reasonable default > configuration and some don't, because the maintainer does not like > this approach. > We also don't seem to have a clear consense how to disable/temporarily > deactivate services. The current situation is that some packages include > a file in /etc/default with a variable "RUN", "RUN_<PACKAGENAME>", > "START_ON_BOOT" or even another possible name > which decides weither a service runs when invoke-rc.d <service> start > is issued or not. Some other packages do not follow this approach > and start or don't start as the maintainer sees fit. >
I don't like this idea of RUN=yes variables in /etc/default. 1.) There is already a documented interface, how to disable a service (i.e. renaming the S?? symlinks for that runlevel to K??). Adding another layer to do this is just confusing and inconsistent. There are tools like sysv-rc-conf which can handle that for you. Enabling a service is then as easy as sysv-rc-conf $service on|off 2.) It makes the init script useless. I often install services, which I only need from time to time, so I disable them via the approach above and can start them on-demand vi /etc/init.d/service. A RUN=no will break that. Imho the only sane option is, to get rid of those RUN_ variables as much as possible and advertise tools like sysv-rc-conf more (or even install them by default). There are indeed services though, which should *not* be started by default, as e.g. they need to be configured first. But instead of inventing such a RUN_ variable, the init script could directly check if its prerequisites are given and only start in that case. It then can also output a more sane error message, telling the user what it is missing and how he can change that. So in short, I don't like the idea at all. Instead of adding more of those RUN_ variables we should get rid of them as much as possible. Michael -- Why is it that all of the instruments seeking intelligent life in the universe are pointed away from Earth?
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