On Fri, 26 May 2000, Grant Walton wrote:
I have a dumb question:
If you ask a dumb question, you're an idiot for five minutes. If you don't ask it, you're ignorant forever.
I still am not sure exactly where to add commands to run programmes I want to start at boot time; I want my ISDN dial server to start automatically whenever the machine is booted. Where do I put this command?
There are choices here. The most commonly recommended way is to put a complete script to start and stop the server in /etc/rc.d/init.d. This script should take a parameter which is "start", "stop", or "restart", and on each execution do whichever of those it is told to. Then you establish symbolic links to it in /etc/rc.d/rc?.d where ? is the various boot levels (1 = text only no networking, 2 = text only with networking, 3 = X and networking). These symbolic links are named S??xxxxx and K??xxxx where xxxxxx is typically (makes things easier to find) a repeat of the script name, and the number (which may not be the same in both cases) is used to specify the order of this script relative to other scripts. Something started by the above method is started ONCE as the machine enters the runlevel (and again as it is shut down), and can be manually run by root as needed. If you have something that is known to be extremely reliable, it can also be put in /etc/inittab but you'll have to read the man page for details. You get to put ONE command in inittab for each thing you want to start, and I don't think you can use parameters, so again you'll probably want to run a script. And you may want to leave the K?? link from the previous approach. With inittab you can still specify what runlevels the program will start in. And if the program terminates, it will be automatically restarted (which is BAD, if some bug or system condition causes it to self-terminate quickly). I'm thinking about doing this with pppd on my firewall. -- To unsubscribe send e-mail to suse-linux-e-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the FAQ at http://www.suse.com/Support/Doku/FAQ/