init scripts, redhat, console use

[bscott at ntisys.com]

On Wed, 18 Sep 2002, at 9:39am, shillman at alumni.unh.edu wrote:
>> I've always just used the "read" built-in for this.
>
> Doesn't seem to work with init scripts. 

  Hmmm.  One of the things Red Hat's initscripts do is run themselves
through a program called "initlog".  The initlog program captures console
messages during boot, so it can be logged to syslog.  Which is normally a
very useful feature.  However, I wonder if it is causing problems with this.

  FWIW, I note that Red Hat does "Y/N" and similar prompting in their
initscripts using a utility called "/sbin/getkey".

> Admittedly, I could probably put the irritating pieces into another script
> which the first script could call, but I'm trying to avoid that...

  Try it (or the Perl idea).  I suspect it won't work.  If initlog screwing
with the terminal is the problem, that will likely be propagated to whatever
child processes are spawned as well.

-- 
Ben Scott <bscott at ntisys.com>
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