The problem with moving the directories is that svscan is stupid! If it
Lets not confuse simple (and reliable) with stupid! I can't think of any way to make svscan smarter without sacrificing at least one of: reliability, administrative ease or code verifiability.
My $.02:-)
finds a change in the /service directory, then it scans the service directory _once_ for new services, then caches this.
What would you have svscan do? Create a dummy logging process that throws away the logging information (the stdout of the main process) until it finds a ./log/run file? I do not desire this.
If svscan does not create a dummy process, then either svscan has to handle the logging information itself or it has to kill off the main process when it finds a ./log/run/file. Neither of these alternatives is acceptable.
I used to desire a smarter svscan, but came to a realization I am much better off by taking a little bit more care when adding a new service. I also have come to the realization that almost every time I wish DJB's software did things a different way, I find that the con's of the desired change outweigh the pro's.
Henry
There's a race condition when moving directories between file systems, and
this causes svscan to sometimes only find the imap or imaps services, but
not their log services. So logging won't work.
DjB's solution is to use a symlink, which forces one to keep "two locations" of the same stuff. DjB uses /etc/tinydns etc, but on qmail.org the recommendation is /var/service/tinydns symlinked to /service/tinydns.
Andy is there a reason for having imap and imaps down by default? I
might not be understanding properly the full effect of have down files in
a service directory.
It's to prevent the services from popping up before they are configured. Of course, since the symlinking is done manually these days (it was automated in old versions of Binc) these files no longer seem necessary.
Andy :-)
-- Andreas Aardal Hanssen | http://www.andreas.hanssen.name/gpg Author of Binc IMAP | "It is better not to do something http://www.bincimap.org/ | than to do it poorly."
-- Henry Baragar Principal, Technical Architecture 416-453-5626 Instantiated Software Inc. http://www.instantiated.ca
