Date: Mon, 26 Dec 1994 00:43:23 +0000 (GMT) From: Joe Greco <jgreco@brasil.moneng.mei.com> To: peter@bonkers.taronga.com (Peter da Silva) Cc: hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: /etc/rc.shutdown (First shot) Message-ID: <9412260643.AA03089@brasil.moneng.mei.com> In-Reply-To: <199412250625.AAA27386@bonkers.taronga.com> from "Peter da Silva" at Dec 25, 94 00:25:36 am
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> > However, I am not arguing _for_ Ollivier's changes, by any stretch of the > > imagination. If you type "shutdown" without bothering to take down INN and > > make sure all's well, you darn well get what you deserve. > > Hokay, I've got an Alpha based box at work that's running a hundred users > and bunches of commercial and local packages. In fact I've got two of them. > I don't *remember* all the stuff you have to do to shut them down right. Write a script. > But, you say, you could just create a shutdown script and run that instead > of shutdown. Hrm... I'm sorry, I'd rather keep things simple. What, by adding functionality that forces you to write a script? Uhh, now I'm confused. I just argued _for_ this, but in the context of not adding it to the guts of init and every other system program that deals with shutdown. Why? Read on. > > I'm not a fan of > > the SVR4-style 10-trillion-shell-script crud (Solaris is horrible), and I'd > > just as soon prefer to keep it simple. ;-) JMHO. > > IMHO, SIGTERM plus ten seconds is far from simple. It's an obscure kludge and > the sort of thing that the Multics and TOPS and VMS fans are *right* to flame > about. I agree, it would be easier to have the system simply go away. > A single "shutdown" hook is far from the System V multiple run level model > (though that's *also* a Good Thing when you have hundreds of users and multiple > people with system administrator type duties). So, maybe I don't quite get it. Now that we're adding crud to halt (et al) to do this, suddenly I end up with a halt that really doesn't halt. Not that the old one did, in any real fashion, but it was a reasonable approximation that tried to bring the system down in a seconds-countable timeframe. Now I'll get a "halt" that maybe doesn't even halt the system at all, if the /etc/rc.shutdown wedges. Generally, if I type "halt", I want the system to be gone. Solaris actually does this quite well, providing "shutdown", "halt", and "uadmin 2 0" to provide a rather fine level of control over how one wants the box to go byebye. Much as I hate Solaris, this is actually quite nice... one thing they did right. I guess I don't see a reason to move this functionality into the system at such a fundamental level. KISS. If one's system is complex enough to require a shutdown script (and I would argue that INN can be), one should write a script that does the right thing. Make it policy to use it. Train the multiple people with SA type duties that they are to use it. Rename "shutdown" if you really damn well want to. But please don't go adding unnecessary "features" to the system. Part of the beauty of UNIX is the simplicity and generality. If it was something that couldn't be achieved in other, simpler ways, maybe it would be different... ... Joe ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Joe Greco - Systems Administrator jgreco@ns.sol.net Solaria Public Access UNIX - Milwaukee, WI 414/342-4847
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