Cory, here is an excerpt by Bruce Perens, from a discussion of LSB:
This has already come up in informal discussion. Run-levels, and the
ordering numbers that scripts like "/etc/rc2.d/S20sendmail" get,
should be handled _symbolicaly_. For example run-levels should have
symbolic names like "single-user", "multi-user-without-networking" and
"multi-user-with-networking", and init script ordering numbers would
have names like "after-local-mounts", "after-network-interfaces-and-routes",
and so on. The standard's version of the command that Debian calls
"install-rc.d" would take care of mapping those to numbers.
The alternative to this would be to standardize those numbers across
all Linux distributions. The problem with this is that when a system
is first upgraded to the standard, it would have to re-name all of its
rc.d links to what the standard defines. If this doesn't run perfectly,
your system is hosed.
This stuff _always_ should have been symbolic, anyway. The numbers are
far from intuitive.
This was quoted in this message:
http://freestandards.org/pipermail/lsb-spec/1999-April/000237.html
which, you can see, was posted back in April of 1999 (disclaimer of
changes over time, yada yada...) You might enjoy some of the responses
in that thread as well:
http://freestandards.org/pipermail/lsb-spec/1999-April/thread.html#237
...like this particular response from Alan Cox:
> Runlevel 5 has recently become widely used outside the Linux world to
> indicate machine shutoff. I guess it should halt if the machine isn't
> capable of shutting itself off. This would push xdm down into
> runlevel 4.
We should not change this. Too many Linux books tell you about run level 5.
Having everyone reboot their server as they thumb through Linux for the clueless
will not win friends
I also found these threads, which are much more recent:
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2001/debian-devel-200107/threads.html#00309
http://freestandards.org/pipermail/lsb-spec/2001-July/thread.html#1645
these are also interesting sub-threads from the above-mentioned debian
list:
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2001/debian-devel-200107/threads.html#00089
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2001/debian-devel-200107/threads.html#00153
also, I came across SuSE's insserv man page, which indicates they use
the following:
Known runlevels are:
0 used for System halt
1 used for single user mode
2 used for local multiuser without remote network
3 used for full multiuser with network
4 reserved for local use
5 used for full multiuser with network and xdm
6 used for System reboot
S used during boot into single user mode
B used during boot before any other runlevel
Well I certainly didn't have time to assimilate all of this, but
hopefully some tidbits from the list threads will help fill in the gaps
in our collective understanding...
ciao!
Ben
On Tue, 2003-03-18 at 11:00, Cory Petkovsek wrote:
...
> As for this stuff, runlevel 3 is console and runlevel 5 is xdm on redhat
> based systems. Runlevel 2 is default on debian, and 3-5 are available for
> the user or other derivative distros to customize. Bob, where does it say
> that 3/5 is a standard?
>
> Cory
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Ben Barrett Software & Systems Engineer
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