Tracing the boot-up trail...

This is an exercise that seeks to unmistakably reveal the sequence of programs involved in the boot process.

Use ftp to obtain the following file from the instructor machine:

  saveoriginals

and also these two:

  differences-rc
  differences-rc.sysinit

saveoriginals is a script to be run. After you download it therefore, you must give it "executable" permissions. The command to do so is:

  chmod  +x  saveoriginals

Now, run it:

  ./saveoriginals

(This assumes your current working directory is the one where saveoriginals resides; if not use full path prefix.) We want to modify a couple of files and this program saves backups of the original versions. The files to be changed are:

  /etc/rc.d/rc
  /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit

The changes are contained in the "differences" files you downloaded, ready to be auto-applied with the patch command. Use it as follows:

  mv   differences-*   /etc/rc.d/      # move the files to where their targets reside
  cd   /etc/rc.d     # change current working directory to same place
  patch  rc  differences-rc
  patch  rc.sysinit   differences-rc.sysinit

The changes this makes to these two files are simple insertion of statements at the beginning and end of each,  to print a message on the screen then wait for a "ctrl-J" from the keyboard before proceeding.

After you make the changes, reboot the machine and be ready to press ctrl-J anytime the process halts with an unfamiliar, nonstandard message on the screen.

After you've rebooted and made the illuminating observations I'm hoping for, please fix things back to the way they were in order to recover the ability to boot up unattended in the future:

cd  /etc/rc.d
cp  rc.org   rc
cp  rc.sysinit.org   rc.sysinit