Perry E. Metzger wrote: > I've never been anywhere where I've seen System V runlevels actually > used for changing the state of a running machine in practice between > one multi-user state and another. When we were re-designing NetBSD's > init/rc system, we solicited information on such use. Although legends > popped up of machines that changed the state of a database for an hour > once a week for various purposes, so far as we could tell cron jobs > that simply told the database to change state and such would have done > just as well. We therefore went with a "traditional" system without > System V style explicit runlevels.
The only case I've seen something used other than "single", "halt", "reboot", and "multiuser" is when a machine could operate either as a plain server, or with an X system console on it; runlevel 4 was used to designate "multiuser, graphical console". One could certainly argue that this is a distinction better made in the X startup area, but I have seen such a thing with my own eyes; it's not legend. Whether it was a good thing or not, well, that's an entirely different question. As noted, it could still be handled in other ways. My only concern for supporting runlevels is legacy/conversion support. If this really did come up on debian-devel, and folks *wanted* a solution, then I would like to ask if there is a qualified developer here who would be willing to bring it up there (I'm not an official developer, at the moment, or I would do it). -- *************************************************************************** Joel Baker System Administrator - lightbearer.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.lightbearer.com/~lucifer
