Maemo Service Handler

It’s convenient for a Maemo developer to have sshd and syslogd running on the device but on normal use they just use resources and wear out the flash.

I made a little Control Panel plugin with zuh‘s help for starting and stopping System V style init script actions. It uses invoke-rc.d for starting and stopping services and update-rc.d to add and remove services in system boot time actions.

It has only basic features implemented, i.e. it can start and stop services and add and remove them from startup routines.

TODO:

  • Speed up starting time by getting rid of fork+exec
  • Add infoprints about the success of execution commands
  • Sort services alphabetically
  • Add option to hide “built-in” services

Maemo Service Handler CPA

Be aware that this includes a suid root binary for executing the System V scripts!

The plugin UI is written with C++ so you need to have extras repository on your catalogue list for gtkmm libraries:

Web address: http://repository.maemo.org/extras/
Distribution: bora
Components: free non-free

The plugin can be installed from my maemo repository:

Web address: http://tuomas.kulve.fi/debian
Distribution: bora
Components: maemo

5 thoughts on “Maemo Service Handler

  • January 31, 2007 at 11:05 am
    Permalink

    Hi Tuomas,

    This is a great helper !
    I installed it flawlessly a few seconds ago and it does what you said !
    Very nice,
    Thank you
    Fred

  • July 1, 2007 at 4:57 pm
    Permalink

    This is a great idea but has a problem in how it determines the priority order for starting scripts (maybe a problem with update-rc.d). It appears to always use a priority of 20 for all scripts. So if you simply deselect start on boot and then reselect it for a critical service, then your device will be unbootable.

  • July 1, 2007 at 6:05 pm
    Permalink

    It uses “defaults”, so yes, it can break things. You should only use it for non-critical things like ssh and syslog mentioned in the post.

  • January 25, 2008 at 8:57 pm
    Permalink

    Could you create a version for ITOS2008?

  • January 25, 2008 at 9:16 pm
    Permalink

    I should. But the service handler should be improved a bit and currently I don’t have time for it..

Comments are closed.