----- Original Message ----- From: "Phil Barnett" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, February 19, 2003 10:25 AM Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo init system : was [Re: [gentoo-user] service parameter passing?]
> > I'm not sure what you mean here. Yes, there are some differences with the > > layout of the runlevel directories but Gentoo uses the same basic structure > > as RH and Mandrake do. > > Well, I guess that's where you and I differ. I don't think they work at all > the same. I see Gentoo's run levels as more like BSD than RH. > > Really, the service script is only about one thing. > > Abstraction. > > If I have a room full of several differing servers and I'm and admin, the last > thing I want to have to remember in the heat of the moment is how to do > something on _this_ machine. /etc/init.d servicename start|stop|restart will work for Gentoo, RH, Mandrake, etc (I just double checked on one of the Solaris boxes at work and it's the same syntax there too). The problem is that instead of using the standard way of doing it, you've gotten used to using a non-standard addition that RH made. Gentoo is behaving exactly the same way as any other System V style init works. This is where it becomes incredibly important to know what the standard way of doing something is and when/how your distro offers a different way of doing things. Yes, Gentoo does use a very different structure for the runlevels than a standard System V style. However, since the runlevel directories just contain symlinks to the scripts in /etc/init.d, it's not a big issue. Abstraction is good but you still need to know how the underlying system works to be a good admin. > Stopping and starting services is one of the admins primary job. > > All the service script does is abstract the stopping and starting of servers > so you no longer need to know which directory to look in to find the scripts. > Perhaps you have never dealt with a room full of a hundred different servers, > but anything we can do to help that guy out will be appreciated. Yes I have, but usually this is where having a common platform because extremely important. Again though, using the service script actually gets you into a bad habbit, using /etc/init.d will actually get you into better habbits that will work across a much wider range of systems. But if you are administrating a wide variety of platforms then yes, having a suite of standard scripts on each system can become extremely handy, but this is more of the job of that admin to set up these types of things to suit their own needs. > Other than abstraction of where the service files lie, the service script is > of no use whatsoever. And I still don't think it even has much use there, unless you're dealing with multiple platforms which don't already have a consistent method for handling services (such as a mix of BSD and System V style boxes). In that type of situation, writing an abstraction script is useful. However, in that case you're going to need to write custom scripts for the different platforms but which take the same arguments from the command-line. Having an included script with the distro is not all that useful because you're needs are going to be too individualized. Andrew "frugal" Dacey [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.tildefrugal.net/ -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
