> yesterday). If one of rc.d/* scripts hangs during shutdown, you are lost.

There is no reason you cannot put the following in a K*.sh script so
that rcN will source it...

pid=$$
(sleep ${MAX_RUNTIME-300}; kill -14 $pid > /dev/null 2>&1) &

to limit total runtime of the rcN script.  I use this in 
/etc/shutdown.d/K05maxrun.sh

If you want a differnt MAX_RUNTIME just edit K01setup.sh or whatever
that will be sourced before K05.


--sjg