Q's on: System V /etc/init....

[Mats Wichmann]

Hmmm, I missed a lot of this conversation, I guess. Guy didn't miss
the point in answering my questions (at least the questions I asked).

And using init to watch over other daemons is really quite simple -
you just need to not have the daemons "deamonize" themselves
(i.e., DON'T fork and have the parent exit). It's like three lines
or so - if you are being elegant (otherwise just delete the fork/exit
lines). That way, init can find out when they die and restart them. 
Nice, eh? We made those changes at Dual when I was there.

I have since unmade them. Why? It's really kind of nice to be able to 
stop a daemon without having to do things like: "edit inittab so cron 
does not get respawned in init stat 6, then switch to init state 6."
If you ever have to reset your system clock you should stop cron.
If lpsched is dying, something is wrong, so you probably don'y
want to restart. It is also a bitch to change your configuration,
since most changes require the scheduler to be off. And so on.

Turns out most "idiocy" is not as idiotic as it appears at first.

Dual still runs the network daemons from inittab, and this makes
some kind of sense, since they provide a service that is more
directly needed by users, and it would be inconvenient to have
to find the system admin. to restart them if they were dying
(although he should probably be trying to find out WHY).

    Mats Wichmann
    Fortune Systems
    {ihnp4,hplabs,dual}!fortune!mats

  "Quality. Comfort. Style.
  And at prices jou can afford!"
    - Izzy Moreno