On Thu, 2 Dec 1999, der Mouse wrote:

# > 5. The old /etc/rc style.  Dispense with it.  It's nothing but a
# >    speed hack, really,
# 
# Not at all.  It's also an immense boon to humans that have to have
# anything to do with the boot process.  I've used SysV-style split-apart
# boot scripts and I've used BSD-style monolithic boot scripts, and for
# human frobbing, the BSD style is far easier.  (Recently the BSD style
# seems to be shattering; witness our /etc/netstart and SunOS
# /etc/rc.boot.  Every such split makes it that much harder for me to
# figure out what I want to do and where.)

This is hard, actually.  There's a fine balance in here somewhere.
I like having all the net stuff one place, all the standard stuff in a
second place, and I was actually pleased with the rc.boot thing that
handled everything that happened just prior to the decision to go
single-user or multi-user, and then there's local stuff.

But that's about the extent of the granularity that I'd go with.
The SAMBA package has already begun to throw us down the wrong road
-- it implements /usr/local/etc/rc.d/samba.  That in itself is not a
bad thing, if we can define the order in /etc/rc.local and
/etc/rc.conf.local (local.conf?  Yeah, yeah, don't even go there.)


# Sure, it's harder for mechanical frobbing.  Not all systems consider
# ease of mechanical access more important than ease of human access.

I prefer the ease of human access and modifications, myself -- if
something goes wrong due to a badly broken automated script that
was supposed to configure my system, I'd like to be able to go back
and fix it.

Having been an admin of just about every kind of UNIX system under the sky
(kind of like most of us here with any time under our belt -- fair, mouse,
thorpej, mycroft, just to name a few), and having had to deal with all
their peculiarities, I think that dumbing down the systems is not all that
good an idea.  I mean, think about it:  would it be all that much more
obvious to the fledgling sysadmin to wade through the PROVIDE/REQUIRE
stuff, or through the init.d/* stuff, as opposed to going through
/etc/rc?

I will admit that /etc/rc.boot would throw in a curve, though.  Better
to avoid it (as much as there's stuff that I'd like separated out).

# 
# 					der Mouse
# 
# 			       mouse@rodents.montreal.qc.ca
# 		     7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39  4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B
# 


				--*greywolf;
--
NetBSD: More Nines.