[Gllug] Getting a script to run at boot time on Debian Squeeze

[John Winters]

I have a SheevaPlug running Debian and I've recently updated it from 
Lenny to Squeeze.  This has led to a problem.

The system has its root fs on an SDHC card and then various data 
directories on an external USB HDD with the space being managed by lvm.

At boot time, the external drive takes a few seconds to be noticed and 
ready, so when I first set it up I put a little script called "dosleep" 
in /etc/init.d and linked it from /etc/rcS.d.  It sleeps for 5 seconds 
and is in the boot sequence just before the lvm stuff.  Like this:

john at sheeva:/etc/init.d$ ls /etc/rcS.d
README		     S20module-init-tools      S40networking
S02hostname.sh	     S24dosleep		       S43portmap
S02mountkernfs.sh    S25mdadm-raid	       S44nfs-common
S03udev		     S26lvm2		       S45mountnfs.sh
S04mountdevsubfs.sh  S30checkfs.sh	       S46mountnfs-bootclean.sh
S05bootlogd	     S30procps		       S47lm-sensors
S07hdparm	     S35mountall.sh	       S48console-screen.sh
S08hwclockfirst.sh   S36mountall-bootclean.sh  S55bootmisc.sh
S10checkroot.sh      S36udev-mtab	       S55urandom
S11hwclock.sh	     S37mountoverflowtmp       S70screen-cleanup
S12mtab.sh	     S38pppd-dns	       S70x11-common
S18ifupdown-clean    S39ifupdown	       S99stop-bootlogd-single

This used to work fine, but since the upgrade to Squeeze, my little 
script doesn't seem to get called at all.  The boot sequence has not 
been converted to dependency based booting - largely because of the 
existence of this script.

Looking at the Debian policy manual, it says one now can't rely on just 
having the symbolic link there, but it doesn't say what the mechanism 
actually is.

I'm intending to add the necessary headers to my script to allow 
dependency based booting, just as soon as I work out why it doesn't get 
called.

Incidentally, the dosleep script currently contains:

#!/bin/sh
/usr/bin/logger "Sleeping for 5 seconds"
/bin/sleep 5
/usr/bin/logger "Finished sleeping"

I know this is horribly out of date, but I don't see why it doesn't get 
called at all.

Any ideas?

John
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