Gene Heskett wrote: > I have a fairly lengthy list of things I've added to > the /etc/rc.d/rc.local file, which is softlinked from S99local in the > various rcX.d directories in RH & Fedora and is the last thing > executed before the login screen in a RG/Fedora runlevel 3 boot.
On Debian there is no difference (by default) to the different run levels. This is an often confusing point to people switching to Debian. And the converse that run levels are meaningful to people switching to Red Hat. There is a reason the run levels are not really important. Here is the rationale as I see it. On Debian using APT managing software is very easy. So if you want something to run then you install it. If you don't want something to run then uninstall it. Want to install the Gnome flavor of xdm? Just install it. apt-get install gdm Decide you don't like it? Then remove it. apt-get remove gdm Decide you want to put it back? Then put it back. apt-get install gdm Because configuration files are not removed any previous configuration that you used will still be present. The second installation won't need to ask you those same questions again because you always answer them. It is a trivial installation. Run levels do not come into play unless you want them to. You can always configure gdm to only start in run level 5 and then use run levels to control whether it starts or not. But distros have been taught that most users require a graphical login. Those that want a text based login are in the minority and will have to configure the system for that themselves. And usually the people who want a text mode login are fully capable so no problem. Also in general when something is installed then it will be running. There is no need to do extra processing such as running "chkconfig daemon on" and then also running "service daemon start" in order to finish things off. Of course I am just using gdm as an example. But any in that class are the same such as Postfix. If you install Postfix it will remove Exim, Sendmail, or other MTAs. Because normally you only run one daemon on the SMTP port 25. So installing one pushes the other out. If you want to switch MTA programs then simply install the one that you want to run. There is no need for chkconfig on a Debian system. In some of the lessor distros this is not the case. User's there have been conditioned that installing software is hard. The only time you can count on it working is at initial system installation time from the cdroms. So they try to install everything that they can at at that time. Because if they wait six months and then try to install something like postfix then they get into a dependency hell where they can't actually install it because all of the libraries have drifted. Of course in very recent times there is apt4rpm and yum from the user community to address these problems. But still the legacy is there. This mentality means that most of those installations have both sendmail and postfix installed at the same time for one example. But only one is configured to run. And installing something like BIND does not mean that it will be configured to run. So on those distros you need to use 'chkconfig' to stitch in the rc scripts and then 'service' get it going. But those operations are not needed nor desired on Debian systems. Okay, that was a little long. But I think necessary to set the process model of the system and why things are different on the different systems. > Stuff like a 4 line stanza that sets up and runs my setiathome admin > script before I'm even logged in as any user, so it runs regardless > of the login state of anyone. > > So where do I put the 'local' stuff in a debian install? > > I could use a short tutorial on the debian setup in re the various > rcX.d directories if someone has the time, or a pointer to a manpage > if there is one. There is no default "local" rc script. Which is perhaps a shame because this is an often asked question. But there is a template that you can use to easily create one for yourself. cd /etc/init.d cp skeleton localrc editor localrc # edit as you desire That file has examples of almost everything in it. You won't need almost everything in your copy. Please delete what you don't need. In fact it may be better to pick an active working script and use it instead. You will be ahead in terms of avoiding the noise. But skeleton is still a good example because it does have a lot of stuff. cp cron localrc editor localrc # edit as you desire Of course that is a traditional daemon startup. If you just want to run commands then you might find hwclock.sh more to your liking. cp cron localrc editor localrc # edit as you desire In any case, there is a tool to set up the symlinks that can be thought of as a chkconfig like tool. update-rc.d localrc defaults This is really a scripting interface. So normally users don't need to know about the command. But it is used in packages in the postinst script. And the reverse removal is 'update-rc.d localrc remove'. And there are various packages and programs to help manage run levels and other things. These three come to mind. sysvconfig rcconf sysv-rc-conf Hope this helps. Bob
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