Subject: Re: Updating /etc...
To: Chris G Demetriou <Chris_G_Demetriou@balvenie.pdl.cs.cmu.edu>
From: Ted Lemon <mellon@fugue.com>
List: current-users
Date: 12/19/1995 11:53:13
> I don't understand.  by definition, the scripts supplied are in the
> 'right order', and if you're adding more you either:
> 	(1) add them in the region reserved to the user, or
> 	(2) know what you're doing, and install them elsewhere.

What if you need to run a script between S49blowfish and S50oracle?
What if you don't know what S49blowfish does?   A lot of names in
/etc/init.d are really obscure.   I don't think you really can tell
what order things start up in by doing an ls on /etc/rc*.d.
Certainly my experience with IRIX tells me you can't.   I had to read
every damned script to figure out how to turn off the services I
didn't want.

> 	(1) package management tools,
> 	(2) hackers.

	(3) security weenies.

> hackers should be able to deal with the slight bit of inconvenience
> imposed.  it's package management tools that i'm really most
> interested in satisfying.

Security weenies should not have to fish around through a million
files to figure out where some random daemon whose purpose  they don't
even know is started.

I'm sorry, Chris, but making things easy for humans *should* be a
priority.   Not everybody is a moby hacker, and even moby hackers can
find themselves out of their depths when trying to figure out an
unfamiliar system.

			       _MelloN_