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

[Casey Dahlin]

Brian Wheeler wrote:
> 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
>
>   

Already found (and fixed) one or two of these. Frankly we're better off 
fixing them.

--CJD

> 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 You could have a big "### THIS FILE IS OBSOLETE ###" at the top, and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.
>>
>>     
>
>