[rfc] Activating Common Services

[Richard Hughes]

On Tue, 2007-06-19 at 10:53 -0400, David Zeuthen wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On Tue, 2007-06-19 at 13:14 +0100, Richard Hughes wrote:
> > Guys,
> > 
> > I've build rpm's of my latest patch, and all appears to be working well
> > on my F7 system. I'll get on and write the unit tests, but I wanted to
> > spend a moment discussing actually _activating_ services like HAL and
> > NetworkManager.
> 
> These services form a core part of the OS insofar that they actually
> monitor (asynchronously of course) things like batteries, networking
> etc; they are not supposed to be activated, rather they are supposed to
> be started as part of the boot sequence much like any other core part of
> the OS.

Sure, replace HAL with bluetooth, the argument changes.

> System-bus activation is mostly only useful for privileged helpers; one
> way I like to think about it is that it's an extremely nice replacement
> for setuid root binaries.

And surely launching stuff like CUPS? I print about once a month, any
yet every time I turn on my computer everyday I spend a couple of
seconds "Starting cups..."

> > So, is HAL wrong to register itself on the bus before adding all the
> > coldplug devices
> 
> Actually FYI that bug was introduced on HEAD (by one of your bugfixes
> even!); 0.5.9 is (almost) fine - it will get fixed for 0.5.10.

Ahh! To be fair, when I patched the startup ordering bug we had never
even discussed system activation :-)

Richard.