On Thu, 14 Jul 2011, Roland Kammerer wrote: > Last week I sent a small patch (~10 lines) for /etc/rc to robert@ that > would allow to prefix daemons in rc_scripts with an '@' and then these > prefixed daemons would be started in background. For example: > rc_scripts="foo @bar baz". bar would be started to background. > > robert replied that starting to background is already implemented and I > should use rc_bg=YES in the individual rc scripts. Then I asked him if > he thinks that this is really the "right" design decision, but I did not > get any answer. > > Just to be sure: I don't blame robert in any way for not replaying, > but I am really curious why you guys took that design decision.
Because rc_bg is only use for daemons that cannot fork into the background. It's not there to speed up boot or anything. > The rest is more or less the mail I wrote to robert: > > Thanks for clearing that up, my fault. Do you really think it is the > right design decision? I think we can agree that it is more or less > impossible for the daemon package maintainer to decide if it is always > safe to start the daemon in background. Maybe there are other daemons > that depend on it, or maybe not. Therefore it is a decision that has to > be taken by the admin of the system and system by system. Irrelevant. daemons should never use rc_bg, except when they are not capable of forking into the background. > Now imagine you install daemons "a", "b", "c", and "d". Then you have to > edit rc_scripts and bring them in the right order. Then you decide from > that, that it is safe to start those without a dependency in the > background. Then you have to edit all these rc scripts and set rc_bg to > YES. Now imagine on a reboot something goes wrong. You have to check > rc_scripts (where you do not see which daemons were started in > background) and then you have to take a look at all of the individual rc > scripts if the daemon was started in background as this might be the > cause of the problem. > > With the current solution there is no single point where you get the > whole picture, it is cluttered around rc_scripts and the individual rc > scripts. > > I think with the proposed solution you have a single point, namely > rc_scripts where you get the whole picture and you have a single point > to edit/change the order and the starting-to-background behaviour. > > Did I miss something important here? Yes, you see rc_bg as something that it's not. It is a necessary hack, nothing else and should NOT be used unless forced to. Also you didn't see the whole picture, because @foobar would not work with base rc scripts because they don't use pkg_scripts to start. -- Antoine
