So, I'm currently being stupid enough to try to write a cross-platform automation tool, which involves managing services, which involves init scripts. And, of course, one of the services I'm managing is Apache 2, and I'm running that on Debian.
So, I write my tool to use Apache's init script's restart function. Hmm, that can't be right, I call the init script with 'restart' and it prints the usage message but exits with a zero return code. Well, sure enough, it's not "right", but that's what's happening -- the init script doesn't support 'restart', yet exits with 0 after printing the usage message. Ah, I think, Apache expects me to use apache2ctl, so I try that. Well, I don't have the status.cgi set up, so I get a 404. Except that apache2ctl also exits with a zero code on a 404! Okay, this sucks. Time to submit a bug. Go to bugs.debian.org, search for 'apache2 init'. Okay, even though debian doesn't allow spaces in package names, it thinks I'm looking for a package with that name; that's stupid. So, I delete the 'init' and look again; nope, no package of that name, either. A little verification with apt-cache, and yeah, the name is definitely 'apache2'. Ah! Stupid little web page, you searched for 'apache2 ', didn't you? Delete the space, search, there it is. Of course, the stupid site has no way to just search for keywords -- it's certainly much easier to make the humans do the work, we wouldn't want to make our computers break a sweat. Grr. -- Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you recognize a mistake when you make it again. -- F. P. Jones --------------------------------------------------------------------- Luke Kanies | http://reductivelabs.com | http://config.sage.org
