According to Greg Hudson:
>
>	1. Why should packages need startup and shutdown scripts?
>	   Maybe I'm being too idealistic here, but from my point of
>	   view, every package should be able to start up by running a
>	   single executable which refers to configuration files in
>	   /etc to decide what to do.
>

Starting up is the easy bit, controlled shutdown is the problem.  I
know that, currently, init sends signals to all processes to make them
exit but sometimes this is not all that you want to do.  Having a way
of performing other functions to handle the shutdown would be nice...

>
>	   Perhaps it's that, during an upgrade, you can merge the
>	   symlinks from the system in with your symlinks and still
>	   have everything take place in pretty much the same order?

Traditionally, the links were hard ones - probably because the
/etc/init.d and rcn.d directories were around before sym links in SYSV
(sym links, from memory, are a r4 concept - some manufacturers may
have retrofitted them to their r3 dists)

>
>The /etc/rc.d and <something>/init.d approach may be an improvement
>over /etc/rc--certainly, encoding part of a package's configuration
>information inside the middle of a system startup file is a complete
>lose--and you might even convince me that in a world of packages which
>don't behave very well, /etc/rc.d and /etc/init.d is the best
>compromise solution.  But I still won't like it.
>

Believe me (please??? ;-)  I deal with both as my paid work, dealing with the
varying levels of braindeath that vendors provide as their daemons is
a bit easier with the sysv method.... (apart from one certain vendor
whose license manager daemon does not disassociate itself from the
controlling tty - aaaarrrrrggggghhh)

-- 
Brett Lymn, Computer Systems Administrator, AWA Defence Industries
===============================================================================
  "Upgrading your memory gives you MORE RAM!" - ad in MacWAREHOUSE catalogue.