> Let me describe the "system states" as they exist now, [...]

> 1) Halted.  I think everyone agrees here.

:-)

> 2) Single-user, or, more correctly "maintance" mode.  Only the
>     absolute essentials are running [...]

And in particular, no attempt has been made to mount anything but /.

> 3a) Multiuser, but without the users.  [...]
> 3b) Fully up and running, multiuser.

> Now, it seems to me most people feel the "need" for a "2b" state.  A
> single user state with networking enabled.  I have to ask what is
> wrong with the 3a state for that.

As someone who uses your 2b state, perhaps I can explain.  I not
infrequently find that, as I'm doing maintenance (= single-user) work,
I need something from the net.  Quite often it's a large enough
something that a ten-finger copy is out of the question, so I want to
suck it over the net.

Or else I want to do something risky, and want to save a snapshot of
the thing that might be damaged first.  Just stuff it over the net to
another machine that's _not_ sick.

In either case, multiuser with no users is not satisfactory; sometimes,
the machine is sufficiently damaged that it _can't_ come up that far.
(Typically, that's exactly what I'm trying to fix.)

Of course, I'm taking "networking enabled" to mean not much more than
"ifconfigs done".  I certainly don't mean "inetd started".  I often
want the NFS client code started, but not the NFS server code.
Certainly, "single-user with networking" has a great deal less
networking turned on than "multi-user with networking".

					der Mouse

			    mouse@collatz.mcrcim.mcgill.edu