Software for managing /sbin/rc*.d

[Jerome Bellet]

Hi all!

Do you know of a good software for managing the links in /sbin/rc*.d? A tool that would allow the user to read the related start_msg & stop_msg and to easily add/remove links?

TIA, Jerome

[James R. Ferguson]

Jerome:

The management of the startup/shutdown script directories is straighforward. I don't know of any "tool" to do what you ask. By design, the nomenclature of the files gives you the knowledge of what's linked to what. Execution scripts reside in /sbin/init.d/. Configuration scripts live in /etc/rc.config.d/ with a filename that equals that of the script they configure. Lastly, the links reside in /sbin/rc*.d/.

The start/stop messages are posted to /etc/rc.log at runtime.

...JRF...

[Dan Hetzel]

Hi Jerome,

I never heard about a program doing what you want. /sbin/rc*.d scripts are quite easy to maintain as the starting sequence is well defined and documented.
Could you explain exactly what you are looking for?

Best regards,

Dan

[Jerome Bellet]

I was thinking of a tool that would display entries the same way we can see during the boot sequence, gathered by run-level, according to the /sbin/init.d/* scripts. Then we could unmark unwanted "services", or mark those we had previously remove.

It would be great if SAM could do it, wouldn't it?

Jerome

[Dan Hetzel]

Hi Jerome,

my 2 cents:

All those scripts are executed in sequence.
So, from directory sbin, executing 'ls -l rc?.d/S*' will list all the scripts as they are supposed to be run (in chronological order).

A small for loop like
for i in /sbin/rc?.d/S*
do
grep "echo \"Start" $i
done

will give the start messages of those scripts.

Unfortunately for you, some variables set in /etc/rc.config.d/* are controlling if the script runs or not, so it's not that simple.

Best regards,

Dan

[Rodney Hills]

If you are looking to control what gets started or not, some of the systems use a configuration file. Like nfs server uses /etc/rc.config.d/nfsconf. Inside this script are variables set to whether the system should start or not.

I think your right about a tool would be nice to help manage these systems.

[Shannon Petry]

Sounds to me like your running Linux. There is a run level editor, which handles sequence, and what is run. There are many problems with this though.
1. DEPENDANCIES. At install time, dependancies are handled properly. Lets assume that you did not know that NIS should be started prior to NFS Client. Well each time you booted you'd have to stop and start the automounter. Many people do not understand the dependancies of a system.
2. SHUT OFF WHAT? If you dont know what you can turn off, it's best not to play around with these files! Some user may think turning off inetd is a good idea.....

Personally I think that the advantage of /etc/rc.config.d does away with the need for a GUI to pick and reposition run at boot scripts. IRIX has a similar directory, but really suck as far as everything else goes.
If you get into the habit of using the /etc/rc.config.d/config files you dont have to delete and re-create links in /sbin/rc*.d, you just shut the service off.

This saves alot of re-installing later if something/someone screws up!

Regards,
Shannon

[Tim Malnati · Accepted solution]

Take a look at webmin at http://www.webmin.com I use it all the time in Linux to do exactly what your discussing plus many, many other sysadmin functions (samba, bind, crons, logging, sendmail, etc). I have not tried under HPUX, but they claim it's supported. The price is right too (open source).

[Jerome Bellet]

Thanks Tim!

In fact I had already installed Webmin on our HP-UX boxes but I didn't know that it could do it.

Unfortunately it does not class the services by run-level.

Good week, Jerome