On Wed, 29 May 2013 00:36:58 +0000 (UTC)
Duncan <1i5t5.duncan@cox.net> wrote:

> 3b) Except... at that point root isn't writable

Let me stop you here. Does it need to be writable at that point?

We're reading the path of the init file to boot from a file, we start
the executable at that path; no writes are involved here.

The only problem left here is that some init systems need a specific
version of the inittab file, although this can likely be changed in
late shutdown as the only exception to this approach.

It sounds very feasible for init systems that are an exception to just
being able to switch init alone or have conflicting files to fix up
whatever is inconsistent; either by scheduling changes till when the
disk is writable, or by doing it on shutdown...

> But it occurred to me that we actually do have a demonstrated
> workable and long used in actual practice exception to the normal
> boot case as precedent, where such maintenance tasks traditionally
> occur, single user mode.

Iff nothing else is feasible enough, this makes a lot of sense to me.

> [initr* SNIP]

Having an initr* as a requirement for being able to switch init system
is maybe a bit too much to ask; same as above, iff nothing else ...

> 4) Finally, the fact that each init-system package gets to control
> its own switcher-mode script keeps control of it with the init-system
> package maintainers, allowing them to choose as complex or simple a
> script as they need/wish, reasonably addressing the whole maintainer
> control problem so evident in another current thread.

We should avoid maintenance burden where we can; we can't also force
things upon them, as you can see in other ML threads here. Init systems
are quite necessary in Gentoo, let's not risk losing their maintainers.

That being said; if there are exceptions to the approach we end up
taking, we need to put these somewhere. It kind of depends on how we
will integrate the init system approach in the Portage tree.

-- 
With kind regards,

Tom Wijsman (TomWij)
Gentoo Developer

E-mail address  : TomWij@gentoo.org
GPG Public Key  : 6D34E57D
GPG Fingerprint : C165 AF18 AB4C 400B C3D2  ABF0 95B2 1FCD 6D34 E57D