On Mon, Jun 13, 2005 at 08:32:23PM -0700, Florin Andrei wrote: > > 'off' - configure the service to not start > > 'del' - remove all state for the service entirely > But that's a state in itself, functionally equivalent to "off on all > runlevels". It's unique only in the way that it is not preserved by "rpm > -U" How *could* it be??? That's the _exact_ difference between using "--del" and "off". > Making --list easier to read is actually very valuable. If you have a > lot of things to take care of, you don't want to spend "brain cycles" > needlessly; plus, which services are on or off is a pretty important > issue, you don't want to make mistakes there. This is a different issue than whether state information should be left on the system by a command named "--del". There would be several ways to make the output of this command more readable without mucking with functionality. (Like, dealing with that nasty xinitd kludge.) > I understand, "--del" takes the service to a state that's not preserved > by rpm. Fine. But who did --del? Most likely the sysadmin. Why should > the software disregard a human decision? The system did not end up in > that state at random, but by human intervention. The software should not > overrule it. The sysadmin shouldn't do that, really, without *expecting* it to get reset to the default at some point -- or, at least, going "oh, duh" when it does. > Why should --del be different, other than "this is the way our > forefathers did it"? Um, because *removing state information is what --del does*! There are two possible alteratives: 1) make *no* services (including syslog, crond, keytable, iptables, etc) start by default or 2) have very inconsistant and basically unpredictable behavior between upgrading and installing a package. Personally, I think it's *much* better to leave things working as they are -- and to teach people to use the easier and shorter off/on commands. > This is the core of the problem and I don't think I received a good > answer yet. You have now. :) > Tradition is fine and all that, but it should change when it's hampering > the usability. Maybe I spent too much time lately with the Gnome HIG and > stuff like that (not strictly related, I know, but you get the idea), > but I think it's the computer semantics that should bend over backwards > to adapt to human semantics, not the other way around. Are you seriously suggesting that "--del" is more human-friendly than "off"? -- Matthew Miller mattdm@xxxxxxxxxx <http://www.mattdm.org/> Boston University Linux ------> <http://linux.bu.edu/> Current office temperature: 81 degrees Fahrenheit. -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@xxxxxxxxxx http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
