Init : someone could comment this ?

[Horst H. von Brand]

Yaakov Nemoy <loupgaroublond at gmail.com> wrote:

[...]

> Don't forget about the other advantages to replacing one interpreter
> with another.  Sh and POSIX give you a certain kind of flexibility
> which I think is falling out of vogue in many circles because many
> people don't like embedding several DSL (domain specific languages)
> into their production code.  Switching interpreters lets you pick a
> language that is more suited to the task, or writing one where there
> isn't.

But futzing around with the init of the machine is at most an occasional
task for the average sysadmin, and s/he won't like (re)learning the
specialized language each time around. The flexibility of being able to
change this on the fly, plus a (reasonably) familiar language is a huge
plus.

Then again, this stuff was designed when machines were booted once a month
or so (thus speed didn't matter), hardware (and other) configuration was
mostly set in stone, and the machine and its setup was cared for by
professionals ("high priests" ;-); today the rage is shutting down/sleeping
and then booting/waking up several times a day, plus a huge variety of
hotplug devices, and all in the hands of ever less knowledgeable users...

In any case, as a one-time user of BSD-style initscripts (one huge script
controlled all; to change anything you edited that one, and any typo made
your system unbootable...), the SysV style of separate scripts (and
predefined runlevels) was a huge step forward.

What is missing IMVHO is the ability of handling service dependencies, but
that one is very tricky. For example, it mostly makes no sense to run a
mail/web/... server if there is no network, but the minority of cases where
it does make sense is sizeable nonetheless. And trying to cater for both
cases rapidly gets to be an unmanageable mess.
-- 
Dr. Horst H. von Brand                   User #22616 counter.li.org
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