runsv and runsvdir problems

["Ciprian Dorin Craciun" <ciprian.craciun@gmail.com>]

    Hello all!

    First of all I must say I like the runit suite very much, and for
about half a year I use it to manage almost all my services (normal
ones and personal ones) on my laptop.

    Usually it runs smoothly, without any big problems, with a few exceptions:
    * first of all I use runsvdir for all the system services (like
udev, getty, etc.);
    * also I allow each user (my self for now) to have a special
service that runs another runsvdir;
    * as my services I use anything, from the X server and client,
bittorent client, to the music player;

    Something like
    -- runsvdir /services
      \-- runsv /services/udev
      \-- runsv /services/getty-1
      ...
      \-- runsv -> runsvdir /services/ciprian
        \-- runsv x
        \-- runsv vpn
        \-- ...

    But there are a couple of problems with this setup (so I propose
some feature requests):

    * first of all a lot of services are not started by default (by
using the 'down' file), but this doesn't stop runsv to start the
logger => could there be an option to start the loggers only when the
server actually starts?

    * if I send HUP to runsvdir /services it sends TERM to runsv
/services/ciprian, which in turn sends TERM to runsvdir
/services/ciprian which breaks, and leaves all my services dangling...
=> could there be an option to actually pass the same signal down the
chain? (for example if I send TERM to runsv or runsvdir, it should
send TERM downpath, and so for any other signal, for example USR1,
etc.)

    * if I want to stop the runsvdir /services it sends the signal to
all its children, but exists immediatly, and this is a problem if I
stop it from an rc.0 or 6 script, because it should wait for all the
children to actually stop; for now it leaves them dangling, and the
unmounting of the file systems breaks... => could there be an option
to actually make runsvdir to wait for it's children?

    * if a process takes to long to terminate (when it receives TERM
signal), it would be nice for runsv to actually send KILL, but this
should be configurable, as I wouldn't like to have runsv kill runsvdir
like this;

    * (a small annoyance) it would be nice to be able to combine runsv
and runsvdir into a single command, as this would reduce the number of
runsv processes, until I actually need to start a service;

    So I repeat that runit suite is a very good one, but I would be
very happy to see these problems solved.

    Thanks all, and keep up the good work,
    Ciprian Dorin Craciun.