PATCH: make contrib/redhat/sshd.init work with older RH releases

[Pekka Savola]

On Sat, 17 Feb 2001, Jim Knoble wrote:

> Circa 2001-Feb-17 22:14:37 +0200 dixit Pekka Savola:
> : IMO this is rather unnecessary thing to worry about yet.
> : /etc/rc.d/init.d work just great too, because of symlinks.  Those
> : aren't going to be removed any time soon I think.  No need to make
> : this more complex than we have to.
>
> I disagree.  If you want to fix it properly at this time, this is
> exactly the sort of thing to worry about.  Are you certain RH will
> leave the compatibility symlink in RHL-7.1?  I'm not.

Yes.  It will be there.

> Why abandon folks who have boxes that have been working successfully
> for some time and have no pressing need to upgrade (other than the sort
> of attitude you appear to be displaying)?  Red Hat Linux 5.2 is no more
> obsolete than, say, NeXTstep 3.x or 4.x, HP-UX-10.x, IRIX-5.x,
> SunOS-4.x, all of which are listed in configure.in.

For most of these platforms, only something like 'add /usr/local/sbin/sshd
in your rc.local' is given.  This is a more complex matter.

Also, the pace at where Linux vs e.g. Solaris is developing is quite
different.  I don't think it's feasible to assume a Linux box installed 4
years ago will still be running non-upgraded; for commercial systems, this
is probably rather commonplace.

> The solution i've proposed will work fine on Red Hat Linux 5.2, and
> coincidentally on 4.2 as well, without posing any additional troubles
> to 6.x, 7.0, or subsequent releases.

Well, it all boils down to this:  do we want to diverge from RH init
scripts?  Adding all kinds of 'my_success' etc. functions push toward
complely separate scripts.  I don't like it from the maintainability point
of view.

If we want to support really old systems, it's probably better to just
provide them a _very_ simple init script which would have worked even
with RHL 3.0.3.  No fuss, nothing to maintain.

Better than using a lot of time verifying every new bell & whistle that'd
appear in newer init scripts, backporting them into earlier versions and
bloating what most people use.

-- 
Pekka Savola                  "Tell me of difficulties surmounted,
Netcore Oy                    not those you stumble over and fall"
Systems. Networks. Security.   -- Robert Jordan: A Crown of Swords