[Fedora-packaging] LSB initscript ordering issues

[John Dennis]

On 12/03/2009 10:39 AM, Bill Nottingham wrote:
> John Dennis (jdennis at redhat.com) said:
>> In the past we used hardcoded chkconfig start/stop numbers to
>> control the order in which services were started and stopped. My
>> understanding is that is deprecated (although still supported) but
>> the preferred method is the LSB boot facility declarations
>> (Required-Start, Should-Start, Required-Stop, Should-Stop). Correct?
>
> I wouldn't say it's *preferred*. It's an alternate method.
>
>> The section describing facility names seems a bit vague to me:
>>
>> Shouldn't the guidelines *require* that the LSB block have a
>> Provides: declaration which at a minimum includes a name matching
>> the initscript?
>
> That's implicitly provided no matter what.

It might be nice to update the wiki to make this clear.

>
>> In addition to the explicit eponymous Provides: what about virtual
>> provides? Do we have a set of virtual provide names? (e.g.
>> mailserver, webserver, or ldapserver)
>
> No. Those aren't defined in the spec.

Right, it's not an LSB issue but a Fedora packaging issue. Do we intend 
to define such a set of virtual provides for Fedora?

>
>> The guidelines also state that an initiscript should never be marked
>> as %config and instead import configuration settings from
>> /etc/sysconfig/$name. But what about the case where a service may
>> have a variety of boot dependencies depending on how it's
>> configured? For example a service might be configured to optionally
>> use mysql vs. postgres, or to use LDAP vs. SQL so it will have boot
>> dependencies on particular services which cannot be hardwired ahead
>> of time.
>
> The LSB spec won't help you here, alas.

Right, this isn't an LSB spec issue but a Fedora packaging guideline 
issue. If a sysadmin configures the service to depend on a specific set 
of dependency services then he/she will have to edit the initscript, 
thus it should be marked %config so that this customization is not lost.

>
>> I doubt the LSB block parsing logic handles "includes" from
>> /etc/sysconfig, or does it?
>
> It does not.
>
> Bill


-- 
John Dennis <jdennis at redhat.com>

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