On Aug 8,  9:32pm, Nathan J. Williams wrote:
} 
} With the latest round of the rc.d flamage, I was reminded that I
} wanted to go look at some of the current Unix-like systems in the
} world and find out how they deal with this pile of muck. I've
} collected information on Irix (6.5), Digital Unix (4.0), Solaris
} (2.6), and RedHat Linux (6.2). Major missing data points are Debian
} Linux, BSD/OS, and HP-UX. I glanced at FreeBSD and didn't find much
} interesting.
} 
} The survey describes the following properties of each system:
} 
} "enable":   How a startup script or service is turned on or off.
} "options":  How startup scripts or services are provided with parameters.
} "ordering": What determines the order of the scripts to run, and how
}             that ordering is maintained.
} "commands": For systems subdivided into per-service scripts,
}             SysV-style, what commands the scripts generally support.
}         
} Other tools for dealing with this part of the system are
} mentioned. Known integration with the native package systems is also
} mentioned. 
} 
} Improvements, corrections, and additional data points welcomed.
} 
} **************        

*****
* HP-UX:

enable:   existence of script in /sbin/rc<n>.d

options:  /etc/rc.config.d/foo contain shell-style variables for that system.

ordering: SysV-style rc<n>.d directories full of numbered symlinks.
	  Links installed as part of packages.

commands: start_msg, stop_msg, start, stop; not all scriphts have stop*

}-- End of excerpt from Nathan J. Williams