On Mon, Mar 28, 2005 at 03:39:22PM -0500, Dave Nebinger wrote: > > For instance you refer to /sbin/rc as the way to change from > > one runlevel to another, yet 'man rc' shows nothing. Whereas > > a 'man telinit' on gentoo does give a description of a program > > claiming to be the correct way to change runlevel... > > Documentation (and man pages in general) are typically out of sync with the > actual development efforts. Many open source projects have hoards of > developers that want to contribute yet many projects are begging for > documentation folks.
I always consider it my responsibility to produce a man page entry for any software I delevelop. They are usually pretty terse and can be created with a basic text editor, so it isn't too onerous if done while writing the code... Tutorials and user manuals are a different ballgame, and something which I could well understand a need for enthusiastic specialists. I could certainly understand why there would be holes in coverage there. > > Plus it isn't clear to me from any docs I can find if /sbin/rc expects > > a text or numeric runlevel argument. At least telinit is > > well documented... > > > > If /sbin/rc is the way to do it, why is it not documented in the manual?? > > If telenit is not the way to do it, why is it in the manual?? > > I'm sure the gentoo developers would like a hand extending the documentation > to include such information. > > But realistically I think you're making a mountain out of a molehill. I > have two runlevels, default and console. I can either use the softlevel at > boot or change the runlevel in /etc/inittab, or both. Perhaps that is because you are used to using a system where runlevel management is not really well worked out... > But who really changes runlevels frequently? I don't. My boxen come up > under the runlevel I assign and they stay up. There's no need to change > runlevels on a frequent basis. I do often like to boot to runlevel 3, and then switch to runlevel 5 once I am happy that everything is working properly. When I need to do any work on the X server, it is handy to be able to switch between the two runlevels. It is also useful in a multi-user environment to be able to bring up a system and have access to it before the general user population are allowed to log in. > As to complaining about the lack of info in the man pages, I'm much happier > that the gentoo folks are focusing their efforts on portions of the gentoo > system that need it, rather than burning cycles on a man page that would > hardly be needed 99% of the time. You evidently don't think the documentation is part of the 'gentoo system'? Personally, I would rather have one feature that works reliably that I can use than two the are flakey or I don't know about. > > And why specify the runlevel by name at boot, and by number in inittab? > > > > Fudging things by just making the name equal the runlevel number just > > introduces a source of potential confusion. A bit like having some file > > commands use name, and others using inode number. Sure you could suggest > > that all file names be made equal to the text representation of the inode > > number, but that would hardly be an elegant solution and would defeat the > > purpose of having text names... It is much better to have all system calls > > work on names and keep the inodes internal - as is done. > > So it's different than BSD. Big deal. It's only one of many differences > between gentoo and BSD/other linux distros. If you don't like it, you're > welcome to either a) submit changes or b) use another distro that's more to > your liking. > > But complaining about portions of gentoo that aren't like BSD doesn't help > anyone. You have completely misunderstood me there. I have never said that I wanted gentoo to be like BSD. What I want is a system that is as good as or better than what I used to have - and where I think something that BSD had was better, I think it worth pointing out.... I am certainly not a BSD biggot. Plan 9 is far more different to BSD than Linux is, but I think Plan9 is a staggeringly elegant system. Being different is fine - especially if it is an improvement. But nobody has yet come up with any logical reason for not considering the inconsistencies in the current gentoo runlevel implementation, and the misleading documentation that accompanies it, to be a weakness. As far as complaining is concerned - obviously there is a lot that works right or I wouldn't be persevering with it. But there isn't much point in posting to the list to say that something worked as expected. I would not presume to dive in and start re-designing things with less than a weeks experience with the system - certainly not without first discussing what I perceive as shortcomings with more experienced users so that I can be enlightened if there is something that I have overlooked. But I think pointing out the existance of flaws is the first step in getting them fixed. Regards, DigbyT -- Digby R. S. Tarvin [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.digbyt.com -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
