Interesting article on boot ordering

[Enrico Scholz]

notting at redhat.com (Bill Nottingham) writes:

>> The main-package has
>> 
>> | Requires: init(ip-sentinel)
>> 
>> and there are -sysv and -minit subpackages which are having both
>> 
>> | Provides: init(ip-sentinel)
>> 
>> The -minit subpackage is a lightweight package while -sysv requires
>> the full initscript bloat (e.g. glib2, sysklogd,...).
>
> You're confusing me here; since when are glib2 and sysklogd
> prerequsites of SysVinit?

Most -sysv initscripts are using the /etc/init.d/functions file which is
part of the 'initscripts' package which has these prerequsites.


>> A -lsb subpackage
>> would be yet more heavyweight (e.g. the entire X11-stuff).
>
> I'm still not sure what you're saying here. LSB init requirements have
> very little to do with X11.

When somebody wants LSB he gets the full

| Requires: redhat-lsb

Last but not least, this package is required for the 'lsb_start_daemon'
et.al.  functions, which are used in -lsb compliant initscripts.


>> There are some problems with this approach (apt is not very clever in
>> choosing the right subpackage), but they are not unsolvable.
>
> But it defeats the point. Having the user pick 'what sort of init
> would you like' is *way* too much technical overkill.

Just a technical issue. You can solve it with future rpm, version 6
technology (e.g. assign minit/sysv-groupmembership to these packages and
rpm/apt tries to maximize groups when having ambiguous requirements), or
apt tries to minimize count of newly installed packages, or the
apt-pinning can be used for it.

In the meantime, using separate sysv/minit/lsb repositories for these
(small) packages would be probably the best solution.



> That's going to be a problem; I don't see us dropping LSB support
> any time soon.

There is LSB support in rhl-initscripts which can be dropped? ;)

I am planning to provide -minit subpackages which do not conflict
with anything else, and to tie them with 'minit-setup-nfsroot',
'minit-setup-vserver' or 'minit-setup-workstation' packages which
are the framework of a runnable system.

Currently, only '-vserver' is published, '-nfsroot' is in internal usage
and I can not tell any dates. ;)




Enrico