Script names

Since the init.d scripts must live in a single directory, they must come from a single namespace. Three means of assigning names from this namespace are available:

In general, if a package or some system function is likely to be used on multiple systems, the package developers or the distribution SHOULD get a registered name through LANA, and distributions should strive to use the same name whenever possible. For applications which may not be "core" or may not be commonly installed, the hierarchical namespace may be more appropriate. An advantage to the hierarchical namespace is that there is no need to consult with the LANA before obtaining an assigned name.

Obviously, short names are highly desirable, since many system administrators like to use them to manually start and stop services. Given this, they should be standardized on a per-package basis. This is the rationale behind having a LANA organization to assign these names. The LANA may be called upon to handle other namespace issues, such as package/prerequisites naming (which I'm sure will be a hot political topic, but essential to make prerequisites to work correctly).

This specification shall pre-define the following script names as being reserved to the LANA. They reflect names which are commonly in use today by distributions to start up various sytem programs/daemons. The behaviour of these scripts are not specified here, and not all distributions may use all of these script names.