inittab vs. /etc/sysconfig/init for runlevel 3/5

[Brian Wheeler]

Some software (Notably IBM's TSM client) writes to inittab for startup:

tsm:23:once:/opt/tivoli/tsm/client/ba/bin/dsmc schedule >/dev/null 2>&1

Its gross, but its a potential gotcha to watch out for...

Brian


On Thu, 2008-03-27 at 09:07 -0500, Chris Adams wrote:
> Once upon a time, Bill Nottingham <notting at redhat.com> said:
> > Initially, we added a quick hack that read /etc/inittab solely to determine
> > the default runlevel. Based on a bug I filed (#432384), we changed that so
> > that the key for runlevel 3 vs. runlevel 5 is GRAPHICAL in /etc/sysconfig/init,
> > and we'e planning to just remove the inittab file to make things more obvious.
> > 
> > I'm open to better ideas, though - should we ship a trimmed inittab that
> > contains *only* the initdefault line? Should we introduce a new configuration
> > flag somewhere else? Does it really matter in the long run?
> 
> If upstart doesn't read it, I'd say don't try to have a hack that has
> something else parse it and configure upstart.  However, /etc/inittab is
> a long-time configuration file for Unix-like systems, so it would be
> good to have an /etc/inittab that contains comments that point to the
> new location for the configuration options (e.g. default runlevel,
> console terminal configuration, etc.).
> 
> You could have a big "### THIS FILE IS OBSOLETE ###" at the top, and
> anaconda, etc. could key off that line (and/or whether the file has any
> non-comment lines in it).
> 
> -- 
> Chris Adams <cmadams at hiwaay.net>
> Systems and Network Administrator - HiWAAY Internet Services
> I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble.
>