Bug#225465: debian-policy: packages must give choice to not start at boot, via debconf

[Josip Rodin <joy@srce.hr>]

On Tue, Jan 06, 2004 at 08:14:09PM +0100, Thomas Hood wrote:
> > > * The behavior of the init system is not defined if there is no
> > >   symlink for the service.
> > 
> > Certainly the init system won't go around looking for scripts to execute if
> > you don't tell it to do anything, so I don't see how this is relevant other
> > than as a consistency thing...
> 
> Suppose you are in runlevel 2.  "invoke-rc.d foo start" runs
> /etc/init.d/foo if /etc/rc2.d/ contains neither an S*foo nor
> a K*foo symlink.

> This may seem strange, but it is not considered a bug because a
> not-fully-populated set of rc?.d symlink directories is considered
> a user configuration error.

It's funny how it goes from "undefined" via "unconditionally start init.d
script" to an "configuration error"... In any event the decision to run the
script lacking any links seems rather arbitrary[1] and it seems less
surprising to me why users would continue to be so confused and frustrated
with the behaviour of the init script system when we do these kinds of
things to them.

-- 
     2. That which causes joy or happiness.

[1] certainly different from e.g. the behaviour of dpkg when you remove
a conffile (it stays deleted), or log rotation tools when you remove the
settings for that (they stay unrotated), or even the init scripts themselves
when you remove the underlying executables or conffiles (they don't start),
etc.