Package: debian-policy Version: 3.5.2.0 Severity: normal The Debian policy specifies (10.3.1) that maintainer scripts should not assume whether or not a specific implementation of the handling of init scripts is used.
It provides a tool, update-rc.d, that has to be used to install or remove an init script activation. However, it does not provide a standard way to check the current status of an init script. Administation packages that need to know the situation of an init script (e.g. webmin-core, ksysv, rcconf, etc.) have to implement checks for all possible implementations. Most of them assume the symlink scheme is used. The reasonnable solution would seem to be to offer an additionnal standard tool : check-rc.d that would take as a parameter an init script, and provide information on the current situation of the script. For example : # check-rc.d installed /etc/init.d/apache && echo true true # check-rc.d startstop /etc/init.d/apache STOP 0 20 STOP 1 20 START 3 95 START 4 95 START 5 95 STOP 6 20 -- System Information Debian Release: testing/unstable Architecture: i386 Kernel: Linux tigreraye 2.4.2-ac28 #1 SMP lun avr 2 01:44:11 CEST 2001 i686 Versions of packages debian-policy depends on: ii fileutils 4.0.43-1 GNU file management utilities. -- Jean-Philippe Guérard
