Hello, I think now is the time to think about how we want to go about starting the Hurd console by default on bootup.
Some things to consider: - What slot should it take in the /etc/rc2.d/ hierachy? I think the Hurd console can currently[1] be considered similar to the X display managers. gdm has S99, I think the Hurd console should have the same value. - What should the name of the init script be? What should the output be? My proposal would be 'hurd-console'. 'hurd' seems to generic for my taste. Likewise, 'Starting Hurd console... done' looks like a decent message to me. Maybe just use 'Starting console... done'? - Should the stop() action be a no-opt? Currently, I believe running /etc/init.d/hurd-console stop would result in screen corruption or similar (needs to be investigated). Marco has submitted a patch for handling signals, is this enough? (probably also needs investigation) - What about the console options? The usual way for init scripts to be configurable seems to be through something like /etc/default/hurd-console, which has key=value pairs and gets sourced by the init script. This might be a good interim solution until we cook up something better[2]. We could add a variable for the mouse repeater options and so on. - Can we just run start-stop-daemon, or do we need some fancy stuff in the start() and stop() routines? No idea about that. Jeff had an init script in a not-released Hurd package once, but I don't think I have that still around. - Anything else I missed? Michael -- [1] i.e., until it also handles system messages, like the bootup messages, at which point it should be moved to the beginning of the bootup. [2] e.g., coordinate with the X strike force and the Linux console-tools maintainers to have common debconf settings for the keyboard layout and mouse options.