Init scritps timeout

[n0dalus]

On 4/15/06, Miloslav Trmac <mitr at volny.cz> wrote:
> Hello,
> Federico napsal(a):
> > Beside all the precautions (ups, raid, journaled filesystems, etc...) and
> > beside the fact it probably was a really particoular database corruption,
> > shouldn't the init scripts have a timeout? If any of the scripts hangs the
> > whole boot process stops. Isn't this a really dangerous behaviour?
> Ignoring initscript timeouts could be even more dangerous, e.g. when
> starting iptables or auditd.

Ideally, services depending on network, even things like web servers,
should not fail when there is no connection and instead wait for one.
With laptops, having to wait while it figures out you're not connected
to any networks is very time-consuming and frustrating. Network
startup shouldn't delay the boot process, and services depending on it
should wait until it's started (though possibly connect to any
available networks like loopback in the meantime). Of course, some of
this is not possible with the current init system, so a new system
that allows for this kind of thing would be a good thing. If a system
is dependent on a network to even be usable (eg when an important
partition is network mounted), it should wait, but for most people
waiting for networks to connect is not needed.

n0dalus.