Upstart and release notes

[Michal Jaegermann]

On Mon, Mar 03, 2008 at 12:17:46PM -0500, Bill Nottingham wrote:
> Bruno Wolff III (bruno at wolff.to) said: 
> > Please include a warning in the release notes that if you have customized
> > inittab, you might need to do something to have those customizations
> > still apply after switching to upstart.
> 
> Yup, it's a known thing.

It looks like corresponding /etc/inittab lines are now replaced
by scripts in /etc/event.d/. Only replacements are not always
equivalent.  AFAICT an inittab line

x:5:respawn:/etc/X11/prefdm -nodaemon

shifted to

# prefdm - preferred display manager
#
# Starts gdm/xdm/etc by preference

start on stopped rc5

stop on runlevel [!5]

console output
script
        exec /etc/X11/prefdm -nodaemon
end script

With the former it was possible to do 'pkill -f gdm' to restart
all gdm and X and I used that on uncounted occasions as various
display elements are not the most robust pieces in systems - both
hardware- and software-wise - to put it mildly.

After the change above killing a display manager means just that.
The only reliable way to restart it appears to be
'telinit 3; telinit 5'; only this restarts much more.  Was that a
deliberate change for really good reasons?  I already found it an
annoying PITA although "telinit line" works in a script.

Those /etc/event.d/ scripts are not marked 'configuration' in their
package so if I will modify some then the next update presumably
will clobber my alterations.  /etc/inittab has this designation.
Am I right that this is a packaging bug?

   Michal