2004.03.25
Thu

Hi,

I have been influenced by Gerrit Pape's comments "why not think
about eth0 as a service" and performing one-time system
initializations with runit services, rather than various rc
scripts.

The attached patch to runit-1.0.1 recognizes the existence of a
file named "myservice/once" in a service directory, to run the
service one time.

The file "once"--like "down"--is intended to be a file created
by touch(1).

As noted in the patch:

# this patch modifies the "runsv" utility as follows:
#
#   If the file "myservice/once" exists--and the file
#   "myservice/down" does not exist--runsv runs the
#   service once.
#
#   The usual conventions for running the service once
#   are followed:
#
#   * if the service is not running, start "./run"
#
#   * if "./run" exits and "./finish" exists,
#     run "./finish"
#
#   * if "./finish" exits, do not restart "./run"
#
#   Note: no recognition is provided for the presence
#   of "myservice/log/once".
#
#
# this patch also modifies the "runsvstat" utility such
# that:
#
#   If the service is down and the file "myservice/once"
#   exists--and the file "myservice/down" does not exist--
#   then the output is:
#
#     myservice: down 310 seconds (run once)
#
#
# rationale:
#
#   to permit the installation of "one-time" services
#   --such as for the purposes of system initialization--
#   within the "runit" framework. 
#
#   see, for example, gerrit pape's "What is a service?"
#   musings in:
#
#     http://smarden.org/pape/djb/daemontools/noinit.html
#
#   similarly, felix von leitner's minit package recognizes
#   a "myservice/sync" file to provide one-time static
#   initialization services.
#   

This patch is just a suggestion for discussion and consideration.
I believe nothing has been done here to break existing
deployments.  In particular, no changes have been made in the
specification or contents of supervise/status.

If the facility were to be formally incorporated into the
release, however, I am sure it would be done much better.

Stay well!

Wayne

-- 
Wayne Marshall
guinix international
http://www.guinix.com/
"Computing Without Borders..."