On Mon, Oct 05, 2009 at 06:12:57AM -0400, Andrew Schulman wrote: > Gerritt, thanks for your answer. Forgive me, but really, this is a mess. > There are a several problems. > > First, the documentation of update-service never explains that the contents > of /etc/service must all be symlinks. This is implied by > /usr/share/doc/daemontools-run/README.Debian, but not stated or explained. > Similarly, > > # update-service --add /etc/service/vbox-TinyXP/ > update-service: fatal: /etc/service/vbox-TinyXP exists, but is not a > symbolic link. > > is confusing since update-service(8) never says that a service directory > must be a symbolic link. I've been using daemontools for a few years, have > read all of the documentation, and never understood this, so I think it's > not clear.
http://cr.yp.to/daemontools/faq.html http://cr.yp.to/daemontools/faq/create.html#why http://cr.yp.to/daemontools/faq/create.html#install http://cr.yp.to/daemontools/faq/create.html#remove > But OK, so I'm supposed to put my configuration into, say, /etc/sv/name, > then run 'update-service --add /etc/sv/name', and update-service will create > a symlink /etc/service/name -> /etc/sv/name. It also creates > /etc/sv/name/supervise -> /var/lib/supervise/name. > > Here again, daemontools is storing its state in /etc, now in two places: > > (1) /etc/service is a tree of symlinks created and managed by daemontools, > for the purpose of keeping track of its services. This is run-state > information that belongs in /var. The symlinks are managed by root, not daemontools, and define which supervised services are available, device-specific. This belongs into /etc/, just as /etc/rc?.d/. > (2) /etc/sv/name/supervise is also created and managed by daemontools, to > point to its state information for that service. Again this is run-state > information. Instead of writing this data into /etc, supervise should just > use the standard location for it: /var/lib/supervise/name. There's no > reason that a user would ever need to change that location, or even know > about it, so it doesn't elong in /etc. Sure there is. supervise is not restricted to root, ordinary users can use it too. The change you suggest would break that, for at least two reasons: permissions and name-space. supervise's standard location for its state information is the ./supervise/ directory. If you, as root, put your service directory into /etc/, you can adjust the location for the files in the ./supervise/ directory by creating a symlink. update-service(8) can help you with that. You can also do manually, and point them into a ramdisk for example. > The basic difference is: /etc belongs to me. /var/lib/daemontools or > /var/lib/supervise belongs to daemontools. daemontools (including update- > service) should never be writing into /etc. Any information it needs to > write to keep track of the installed services, it should put into > /var/lib/daemontools or /var/lib/supervise. I'm sorry, I don't agree. There're quite some update-* programs that adjust configuration in /etc/. > It seems that daemontools is trying to be flexible, by allowing me to put my > service descriptions anywhere, and then using update-service to create > symlinks in /etc/service for me. But this doesn't make sense. Why not just > require that they all go into /etc/service in the first place, and assume > that any directories there describe services? That's the standard approach, > used by every other package I can think of. It makes sense. And you should look again, there are quite some packages in Debian that use symlinks in /etc/. Please close the bug again, or at least make it severity wishlist. I do see no bug here. Regards, Gerrit. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-rc-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
