>>>>> "Rob" == Rob Healey <rhealey@altair.helios.mn.org> writes:

Rob> 	Have you worked at a large UNIX site? There is a reason why
Rob> LARGE sites like /etc/init.d, it's not just dumb luck. In a
Rob> nutshell:

Rob> 	1: pkg* allows clean installation and removal of packages
Rob> without having to scour a multigig filesystem tree looking for
Rob> remnants or worrying some init file has been missed causing
Rob> lockup or worse on reboot.
	
Rob> 	2: /etc/init.d provide's ONE place where you have to look for
Rob> scripts that start/stop each subsystem. It doesn't require
Rob> careful examination of a HUGE rc.local file to try and find the
Rob> pieces you need to comment out or alter or manually type in to
Rob> start/stop a subsystem/package. Each script tells you what you
Rob> need to know to start/stop a subsystem.

	Having always worked at reasonably distributed, higly
heterogenious environments, my only comment to this is that init.d
seems over-complex for the simple case.  My own goal on any new system
that we receive is to modify as little as possible outside of
/usr/local as possible (we even use /usr/local/gnu instead of the
default /usr/gnu).

	It strikes me that having a single config file in /etc that
would configure NetBSD would be a win.  That said, I don't care what
it's called and it's content should be dictated and used solely by
/etc/rc and other scripts that are deemed to be necessary by the base
OS.

	I am in favor of /etc/rc.local as it has a very clear
relationship to /usr/local.  At any 'big' site, with many
administrators, a clear policy for dealing with a heterogenious set of
machines is more important than a vendor's preference.  While it need
not be in the base NetBSD distribution, I would be tempted to recomend
that you take on a convention like the following for your 'large'
site and it's NetBSD machines:

/usr/local/pkg/*.files		- files in package
/usr/local/pkg/*.start		- startup package
/usr/local/pkg/*.stop		- stop a package

	Especially since OS upgrades can be frequent (if you're
tracking current), you don't want any mess lying around in /.

Dave.

-- 
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|David Gilbert, PCI, Richmond Hill, Ontario.  | Two things can only be     |
|Mail:      dgilbert@pci.on.ca                |  equal if and only if they |
|http://www.pci.on.ca/~dgilbert               |   are precisely opposite.  |
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