chkconfig limitations on SLES10

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Environment

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 Service Pack 1

Situation

Chkconfig can be used on top of insserv to enable or disable services on certain runlevels.
chkconfig reads services it has to enable or disable either from commandline or from a file.
If there is only one service to treat, chkconfig passes the service and its new state to insserv which will actually perform the requested action.
insserv then calculates the dependencies of the service and adds or removes links to the specified runlevels.
However, insserv on SLES10 and all of its Service Packs can calculate dependencies for only one service at the same time and will refuse to work on more than one service.

To work around the limitation imposed by insserv, chkconfig uses --force option of insserv when it reads the list of
services from standard input.
This could lead to the undesired effect that some services relying on another do no longer work anymore after a reboot or change of runlevels.

Resolution

Do not use chkconfig to change more than one service at the same time unless you know what you are doing.

The limitations imposed by insserv can not be resolved before SLES11.

Disclaimer

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