Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!virtech!cpcahil
From: cpcahil@virtech.UUCP (Conor P. Cahill)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.i386
Subject: Re: inittab action entries under ISC 386/ix
Summary: use the rc2.d directory for your script
Keywords: bootwait sysinit rebooting after rebuild
Message-ID: <1229@virtech.UUCP>
Date: 4 Oct 89 23:21:02 GMT
References: <965@dialogic.UUCP>
Organization: Virtual Technologies Inc
Lines: 30

In article <965@dialogic.UUCP>, alan@dialogic.UUCP (Alan Murphy) writes:
>  I am developing device drivers under ISC 386/ix 3.2 and I
> need to be able to create an inittab entry at build time. I
> thought I could use the action word bootwait (basically the
> operation involves downloading code to a controller at power up
> time). However, on the first system reboot after rebuilding the
> kernel, my inittab entry is not acted upon (I suspect that init
> examines the old inittab first and subsequently rebuilds inittab
> using the new information). All subsequent reboots work fine. Can
> someone confirm my suspicion? Has anyone had similar experiences?

Instead of modifying the inittab table to add a bootwait entry, you 
should add a small shell to the rc?.d directory (suggest rc2.d) which
will download the controller.  Naming the file apropriately will allow
you to control when your controller is downloaded when compared to the 
other rc2.d startup scripts.

A good side effect of this is that if the driver is causing the 
kernel to panic, you can boot to single user mode without running into
your download code (or if you boot your old reliable version of /unix
because the new one doesn't work, you won't have problems with an 
attemp to download the controller).

BTW the inittab file is rebuilt as the system goes from single user
mode to multi user mode.
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| Conor P. Cahill     uunet!virtech!cpcahil      	703-430-9247	!
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