[SLUG] If its not broken, dont (attempt to) fix it?

[Adams, Jamie]

> ----------
> From: 	Gavin Baker[SMTP:gavbaker at ntlworld.com]
> Reply To: 	scarborough at mailman.lug.org.uk
> Sent: 	30 October 2002 20:05
> To: 	scarborough at mailman.lug.org.uk
> Subject: 	Re: [SLUG] If its not broken, dont (attempt to) fix it?
> 
	<snip>

> Leafnode is a small NNTP news server.
> wwwoffle is a web proxy that can cache pages for viewing while offline.
> 
> I guess you selected the "server" task or similar at install time? 
> 
There was no option for server, workstation or anything like that. It pops
up with tasksel in the install and I chose:

	X Window System
	Desktops
	Dialup Station
	Games (of course :)
	Debian Jnr (for the little one)
	C/C++ Development

When you look at the choices in detail they do include a lot of things that
are not really related to the category they are in. In future I may just use
dselect.
	
> > It used to be a fairly painless process in Mandrake, you could do it
> through
> > the control center. In Redhat I used to use the ksysv utility, which
> worked
> > fine. I plumped for ksysv, told it that I was using Debian and started
> to
> > remove the ones I didn't want. It all looked okay, so I saved my changes
> and
> > skipped past the warning that doing it all wrong could bugger up my
> system.
> 
> Well the easiest way to remove them is just "apt-get remove leafnode
> wwwoffle". 
> 
Duh.. I should have thought of this.

> If you want to leave them installed but not have them start up at boot
> time, you can just remove their /etc/rc*.d/ scripts or maybe change the
> /etc/rc2.d/S*wwwoffle script to /etc/rc2.d/K*wwwoffle. (debian boots to
> runlevel 2 by default). This is what the various GUI sysV init editor
> thingies do.
> 
It boots to X windows on mine (runlevel 5?), which is quite frustrating
because it does not test, or give you the option to test your X settings
before doing this. I managed to get it working anyways,

> debian comes with "update-rc.d" to make this easier, theres also a
> little curses GUI for it called "rcconf". 
> 
Thanks, I will have a look. Debian seems to be full of these useful little
utils.

> I don't know a simple way (other than ls /etc/rc*.d/) to get a quick
> overview of whats started/stopped at which runlevel, so i made a little
> perl script to do it (attached), chmod u+x it and run it, it will show
> lines like:
> 
>        0 1 2 3 4 5 6
>   acct - - + + + + -
> apache - - + + + + -
> 
> The numbers being the runlevel's, '-' meaning "gets stopped" and '+'
> meaning "gets started".
> 
Cheers, thats very helpful. (note to self - must learn perl)

> I've never used ksysv, but if it destroyed your init scripts without
> saying "OK, im gonna destroy your init scripts now, are you sure?". Then
> i would file a serious bug report against it!
> 
It was probably more my fault than anything, a lesson learnt well, anyway.

> > On bootup I noticed that there was a lot (loads) more information than
> usual
> > scrolling past, most of it said something about forcing loads and
> tainting
> > the kernel. It looked like this was something to do with the USB modules
> so
> > I used the modconf utility and removed them from the kernel. I dont use
> any
> > USB stuff anyway.
> 
> I can't really guess what "forcing loads" would mean, but perhaps an
> init script that mounts your root filesystem read/write was deleted or
> such?
> 
Possibly. I still cant work it out.

> If a kernel module isn't released under a GPL license, then it "taints"
> the kernel. http://www.tux.org/lkml/#export-tainted has more. Did you
> use some binary only kernel drivers?
> 
Thats what I thought it meant, but it was complaining that the NTFS and USB
modules were tainting the kernel, im am almmost 100% sure that these are
gpl'd. I did install the Nvidia drivers, but they shouldnt have affected any
of the other modules should they?

Anyway, I reinstalled last night and most things seem to be working okay
now. Fingers crossed anyway, I really would like to get some work done on my
computer!

> Regards,
> Gav
> 
> 
> 
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