[ On Tuesday, April 11, 2000 at 10:25:48 (+0100), David Brownlee wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: /etc/rc.d/ runs slowsly
>
> 	It may be overkill for this task, but it is a very useful feature
> 	to have when working on a command line (provided it doesn't
> 	exhibit the bizarre braindamage I've seen on some redhat systems).

That's part of the problem with a "kill-by-name" command -- it is almost
guaranteed to exhibit bizarre braindamage, especially when the OS allows
the command to munge what PS shows as the command line.  'ps -c' helps
somewhat here of course but you'd have to remember to use it (or hide
its use auto-magically and thus provide another major avenue for user
confusion).

> 	I believe skill, or killall if you prefer, is in the same class
> 	as top - its a really handy little tool that makes NetBSD more
> 	friendly to a random admin. If its done by extending kill and
> 	making a hardlink then the amount of disk bloat is minimal...

Now there's real over-kill for you!  'top' can already kill things in a
user-friendly way!  Why do we need even more duplication?!?!?!

Disk bloat is the least of the issues here -- having 50,000 specialized
commands, none of which do what you want, is the problem.  People who
want/have to use Unix at the command line must learn to use tools.  One
tool for one job.  Proliferation of a zillion new commands and options
is a far worse kind of bloat than any waste of bits.  Raise your hands
everyone who likes AIX and all the command-line tools it has to munge
secret databases it uses for configuration.....)

-- 
							Greg A. Woods

+1 416 218-0098      VE3TCP      <gwoods@acm.org>      <robohack!woods>
Planix, Inc. <woods@planix.com>; Secrets of the Weird <woods@weird.com>