On Mon, Mar 13, 2000 at 10:52:03PM -0800, John Nemeth wrote:
> On Jun 29, 10:53am, "Simon J. Gerraty" wrote:
> } Did I ever mention that the _biggest_ advantage of individual rc scripts has
> } nothing to do with boot/shutdown managment?  Its being able to tell the 
> } night watchman at the end of the line to "type '/etc/init.d/ntpd restart'"
> } or whatever, rather than explain how to run ps, kill etc etc.
> 
>      I do not consider this to be an advantage, since there is no way
> that person should get anywhere near a root prompt.  If the system is
> so critical that it can't wait for a qualified person to come on site,
> then the company better be prepared to do whatever is needed to get
> that qualified person remote access or pay for qualified people to be
> on site 24x7.  Otherwise, they are just asking for trouble and are
> likely to have bigger problems.

Uh, no. What bigger problem do you refer to?

Say a problem happens at, oh, 5am. Wouldn't it be smart to
have a 2xMinimumWage person watching for a blinking red light, and
then typing one command that will get the system through the rest of
the night? This way the "qualified person" (who gets paid much more
than 2xMW) won't have to be called, woken up, pissed off, and then 
compensated?

After all, what's the qualified person going to do in the middle of the
night? Type the same command in to get the system limping along, and
then go back to sleep. The real problem can be fixed during normal
business hours (at least typically, in my experience). 

You can even use sudo/ru/similar to keep the night watchman from 
executing any commands other than /etc/init.d/* to minimize the
damage that said person can do while still allowing for a big
cost savings from not calling the skilled person.
-- 
Kevin P. Neal                                http://www.pobox.com/~kpn/

"You're a slacker if you only give 90% 'cause you are afraid of the \
  other 10%."    -- Ross Smith               Apr 22 1999 2:29am