On Mon, Aug 07, 2000 at 09:10:41PM +0100, Mo McKinlay wrote: > I had an idea about developing this for Linux (I wasn't aware some such > thing existed) - actually inspired by WinNT's "service" handling. The way > it worked was (briefly): > > - Every service had several states: > * Stopped > * Starting > * Started > * Paused > * Stopping
Not sure if paused, stopping and starting bring us much. Most services aren't really pausable (how would you pause gpm, nfs or X ?). Also starting and stopping can be probably internal to init. > - Every service could be controlled by a pretty standard command (I used > the name 'svc' for my test program), which took the syntax: > > svc NAME [OPERATION] > > Without the OPERATION, it displayed the current state of the service, > otherwise, OPERATION must be one of: > * Start > * Stop > * Pause > * Restart (= unpause ?) reload-config and real restart (= stop & start) might be useful actions. > And the configuration was managed by makefile-style files so that services > could depend on one another - the 'starting' and 'stopping states were > used primarily when starting/stopping dependencies, in order to prevent > startup/shutdown loops. Circular dependencies are bad. Probably can do without. Also we will probably need start-a-before-b relation (gpm should be tarted before X, but X don't depend on gpm nor gpm on X) And we'll probably also need reversed is-part-of relation (all mounts can be-part-of virtual filesystem, and some package can depend on complete filesystem to be done) Oh, and conflicts wolud be useful, if you want to test two wob/ftp/*-servers etc. > 'Runlevels', as they exist now, were effectively pseudo-services, with > every service that ran in them being dependencies (I didn't quite get as > far as doing this bit, so things are still a bit hazy). I decided on named > runlevels, though, which was a) less confusing for the user b) allowed > more flexibility (init graphical, init multiuser, etc), and thinking about > it, c) is more fitting with how HURD goes (imho). Agree. > # > When ? > # > # Only good god knows. > > If there's interest, I could start hacking something together - or at > least, getting a concrete design together? I'm willing to test it on both GNU/Linux and GNU/Hurd.
