Evidently, this one got dropped somewhere yesterday, since I never saw it
again after it went out.  Here's one more try...

Matt Ragan (matt@ibmoto.com) wrote:
>From matt Wed Dec 20 10:50:31 1995
>Subject: Re: Updating /etc...
>To: rhealey@altair.helios.mn.org (Rob Healey)
>Date: Wed, 20 Dec 1995 10:50:31 -0600 (CST)
>Cc: ghudson@mit.edu, current-users@NetBSD.ORG
>In-Reply-To: <199512191548.JAA08712@altair.helios.mn.org> from "Rob Healey" at Dec 19, 95 09:48:50 am
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>
>Rob Healey wrote:
>>
>>> It evades me why people in the System V world decided that each
>>> package should have its own startup/shutdown script in /etc.  Why does
>>> all that hair belong in /etc, instead of in the executables for the
>>> packages themselves?
>>> 
>>	Have you worked at a large UNIX site? There is a reason why LARGE
>>	sites like /etc/init.d, it's not just dumb luck. In a nutshell:
>
>I work at a 'large UNIX site', and personally, I don't like the /etc/init.d
>(or others' /etc/rc.d).  However, as much bashing as AIX deserves in general,
>something akin to AIX's inittab might not be a Bad Thing(tm).  
>
>Note that the following is not AIX's implementation, but is somewhat
>loosely based on it:
>
>In /etc, you would have a file that would have the following format:
>
>package name:start command
>
>The 'package name' is simply a label, and the 'start command' should be
>fairly obvious.  In /etc/rc or /etc/rc.local, you would have a place to
>go through the file starting each of your packages, either with a shell
>function or an external command, depending on implementation.  An
>external command would probably be more useful, since then you could
>manually start something after this system is up with the same way it
>would be done in the rc files.
>
>If you wanted to get fancy and more configurable, you could extend it
>to something like:
>
>package name:subsystem:start command:shutdown command
>
>In this case, you can call the startup command multiple times throughout
>your rc files to start things in different places, if you need to.  For
>example, start the 'net' subsystem in one place, and then later start
>the 'nfs' subsystem.  The subsystem would be optional, so that at
>the end of /etc/rc, you would call the startup command to start the
>remaining packages that do not have a subsystem.  The start command
>should also be able to take a package name, rather than a subsystem
>name, to be able to start a specific package; this would be more
>useful for starting things manually while in multiuser.
>
>The shutdown command could be used within /sbin/shutdown (or, more
>likely, a frontend shell script) to do special shutdowns for the
>packages that need them, for example, a database.  It would be an
>optional field, since not everything needs special shutdowns.
>
>This gives you a number of things:
>
>a) it's a file, not a directory, so you don't have a directory structure
>   underneath /etc.
>
>b) you can order your packages within each subsystem to have them start
>   up in the order you want them to, which is much more difficult to do
>   in the 'file in a directory' concept that init.d uses; you end up with
>   lovely file names like S88nfs.
>
>c) install packages can insert the appropriate startup line into the
>   file easily to get automatically run on startup/shutdown, and removal
>   packages can easily remove them by keying off of the package name in
>   the file
>
>d) it's optional.  If you don't want to use it, put your stuff in /etc/rc
>   or /etc/rc.local as you did previously, and it will work the same as
>   it did before.
>
>-- 
>--------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Matt Ragan  (matt@ibmoto.com)  Motorola/IBM Somerset PowerPC Design Center
>Network Administrator          Systems/Network Engineering  (512) 795-7298
>9737 Great Hills Trail         Austin, Tx  78759        FAX (512) 795-7519
>--------------------------------------------------------------------------
>


-- 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Matt Ragan  (matt@ibmoto.com)  Motorola/IBM Somerset PowerPC Design Center
Network Administrator          Systems/Network Engineering  (512) 795-7298
9737 Great Hills Trail         Austin, Tx  78759        FAX (512) 795-7519
--------------------------------------------------------------------------