Have I gone Nuts?

[C M Reinehr]

Ben Duncan wrote:

> <LOL> ..
> 
> Taught a 5 day class last week at a New Horizons learning Center, on 
Linux.
> Basically threw the book they supplied out, (HEY, When vi is at the end 
and they
> cover changing default values, you know you have to do something!!).
> 
> One of the things I covered, was the init procedures and how to the 
System boots
> up and shuts down.
> 
> Now, I was using Mandrake 9.1 (And not wanting to start a religion war 
here - but
> suffice it to, I will never use it again!!) and one of the students 
caught my 
> fax-paus
> on run levels. Further investigations showed, that ALL the scripts for 
all things
> needed to be started are in a ALL of the runlevel rc<dot>d files.
> 
> Now, came across several interesting articles on inittab (One of them 
was yours
> Mr. Bandel - and the picture at the bottom shows I do have a twin 
somewhere in this
> world) and all of them show the following standard :
> 
> l0:0:wait:/etc/init.d/rc 0
> l1:1:wait:/etc/init.d/rc 1
> l2:2:wait:/etc/init.d/rc 2
> l3:3:wait:/etc/init.d/rc 3
> l5:5:wait:/etc/init.d/rc 5
> l6:6:wait:/etc/init.d/rc 6
> 
> Anyway, I was perplexed, as I was USED to having something (From the
> olden days)  where the scripts specific for both the S and the K 
functions
> for that particular runlevel were contained in the runlevel specific 
directory,
> and were passed thru on the way UP or DOWN to a specific run level.
> The RC scripts were generally NOT repeated in any of the other runlevels.
> 
> NOW have I gone nuts, was not paying attention in MY class, or simply
> am stupider than a box on this ?
> 
> And for the NEXT question, are there ANY recommendations on what a
> GOOD Distro for using to teach the NEXT class with ?
> 
> Thanks ...
> 
> 
> 

If I understand your question, you're asking if the processing of run 
levels is a fall-thru process. That is, to boot to runlevel 3, you first 
execute the startup scripts in the rc1.d, rc2.d before executing the 
startup scripts in rc3.d. If so, then I believe you are mistaken. It is my 
understanding that to switch to runlevel 3, the system executes only the 
startup or kill scripts in rc3.d (or, which ever run level you are 
switching too). Also, as Net Llama just said, all of the directory entries 
are symlinks to back to the init.d directory.

Also, for what it's worth, after Caldera self-destructed, I decided to 
migrate to Debian. For an educational environment you might also what to 
take a look at Linux from Scratch.

Cheers!

cmr
-- 
Registered Linux User #241964
----
"Do not meddle in the affairs of Wizards, for they are subtle
and quick to anger." -- Samwise Gamgee