On Fri, 4 Jun 1999, Daniel Quinlan wrote:
> In a graphical bootup environment, you could easily redirect any text
> output (to a graphical dialog, a log, or /dev/null). There's a very
> big difference between the init file printing output and the users
> seeing it. Distributions can handle it however they wish.
I think it would be better for init scripts to call functions which describe
what's happening, rather then forcing other bits of init to parse (somewhat)
arbitrary text output. This would have the side affect of making init scripts
i18n w/o forcing the writer to do any extra work.
Something like:
. /etc/rc.d/init.d/functions
case "$2" in
start)
report starting "dhcpd"
dhcpd
if [ $? != 0 ]; then
report failed "dhcpd"
else
report started "dhcpcd"
fi
;;
status)
if [ -f /var/run/dhcpd.pid && -d /proc/`cat /var/run/dhcpd.pid`
]; then
report running "dhcpd"
else
report notrunning "dhcpd"
fi
;;
esac
What do others think about this? Obviously errors would still go to stderr,
but by using some indirection in there folks can control how startup messages
appear with a good deal of accuracy.
Erik
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