From: Jim Fitzmaurice (jpfitz@fnal.gov)
Date: Tue Jul 30 2002 - 12:22:52 EDT
Hello again,
No surprise, Dr Blinn has the answer again. My original question follows
Dr. Blinn's response:
In the init code, it has this initialization logic:
if (argc > 1 && *(cp = argv[1]) == '-') {
while (*++cp) {
switch (*cp) {
case 'a':
howto |= RB_ASKNAME;
break;
case 's':
howto |= RB_SINGLE;
break;
}
}
}
so the "-a" switch is setting the RB_ASKNAME flag. However, that flag has
NO impact on the functioning of "init". I suspect it's a legacy flag of
some kind that is no longer used. I have no idea why anyone is passing in
the flag, but there you have it.
Tom
Dr. Thomas P. Blinn + Tru64 UNIX Software + Hewlett-Packard Company
Internet: tpb@zk3.dec.com, thomas.blinn@compaq.com, thomas.blinn@hp.com
110 Spit Brook Road, MS ZKO3-2/W17 Nashua, New Hampshire 03062-2698
Technology Partnership Engineering Phone: (603) 884-0646
ACM Member: tpblinn@acm.org PC@Home: tom@felines.mv.net
Worry kills more people than work because more people worry than work.
Keep your stick on the ice. -- Steve Smith ("Red Green")
My favorite palindrome is: Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas.
-- Phil Agre, pagre@alpha.oac.ucla.edu
Yesterday it worked / Today it is not working / UNIX is like that
-- apologies to Margaret Segall
Opinions expressed herein are my own, and do not necessarily represent
those of my employer or anyone else, living or dead, real or imagined.
----- Original Question -----
Hello,
I had an interesting question posed to me and I was wondering if anyone
out there knows for sure.
On each machine there is an "/sbin/init -a" process running, but the man
page doesn't show a "-a" option. I assume this is because it's run from the
kernel as the original init process, so the "-a" isn't an available option
for the common user. But rather than tell him what I think, I'd prefer to
give him a correct answer base on knowledge. So does anybody KNOW what the
"-a" option for the init process is for? Or as the question was posed to me,
"I looked in the man pages on OSF and "init" is the process doing the
startup scripts as expected. Curiously I see no mention of a "-a" option in
the man pages, could someone explain why that is there to me and what it
does?"
James Fitzmaurice
D0 Online Systems Manager
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
(630) 840-4011
jpfitz@fnal.gov
UNIX is very user friendly, It's just very particular about who it makes
friends with.
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