Well, just reporting that this whole instructive interchange resulted in my using in the remote-boot nodes of our clusters the policy-rc.d script
#!/bin/bash test -x /sbin/runlevel || exit 101 if [ "`/sbin/runlevel`" == "unknown" ] ; then exit 101 fi exit 0 It solved the problem with rwhod in Sarge, but not in Woody, because the package's scripts do not use invoke-rc.d in that case. The runlevel gets undefined inside the chroot shell because I mask the /var/run directory, mounting an empty directory over it. This mount is playing the role of a "flag file" in order to momentarily prevent the daemons from starting. The use of this policy-rc.d script is made necessary by the fact that the program invoke-rc.d seems to default to allowing the scripts to start and stop daemons when the runlevel is undefined. I find this a bit odd, seems to me that it would be more natural for it to default the other way. In case anyone in interested in the clusters of diskless X11 terminals in which this issue came up, I am posting in the following message a copy of an announcement I sent to the debian-user list a few days ago pointing to the web pages about the cluster tool packages. Thank you all for your help! Cheers, ---------------------------------------------------------------- Jorge L. deLyra, Associate Professor of Physics The University of Sao Paulo, IFUSP-DFMA For more information: finger [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---------------------------------------------------------------- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]