Hello,

for a home computer that gets shutdown daily, I'd like to implement a
function which:

1. makes sure that all pending outgoing mails are sent off. The system uses
its local exim to send mail over the (slow) net, and I don't want to pull
the plug on longish emails that are being sent. Essentially the shutdown
process should stop and proceed only after exim is finished with its
business. Is running "exim -q" enough for that?

2. makes backups of all user home directories. For this I'd prefer the
system to be in single-user mode so that no files can change dureing
backup (in reality this is not so important because nobody does anything
on this machine after X has shut down.

While I know how to properly write an init script (I'm going to rely on the
Debian policy for this) I'm unsure as to the runlevel these actions should
be taken. The exim thing of course must happen before the network shuts down
and the backup should be the last thing before the disks are unmounted.

Suggestions, anyone?

--D.

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On Mon, Jan 28, 2008 at 03:22:41PM +0100, Dan H. wrote:
> for a home computer that gets shutdown daily, I'd like to implement a
> function which:
>
> 1. makes sure that all pending outgoing mails are sent off.

Here's what I've come up with. Anything not to like?

#!/bin/sh

# install with this as root:
# # update-rc.d flushmail defaults 21 19
# assuming that exim has sequence number 20 on startup and shutdown.


### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides: flushmail
# Required-Start:
# Required-Stop: exim4 mail-transport-agent
# Should-Start:
# Default-Start:
# Default-Stop: 0 1 6
# Short-Description: Flush mail queue
### END INIT INFO

set -e

QUEUERUNNER="/usr/sbin/runq"

if [ ! -x $QUEUERUNNER ] ; then exit 1 ; fi

case "$1" in
start)
echo "Not flushing on startup"
;;

restart|stop)
echo -n "Flushing mail queue..."
$QUEUERUNNER
echo "done."
;;
esac

exit 0

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On Mon, Jan 28, 2008 at 03:57:29PM +0100, Dan H. wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 28, 2008 at 03:22:41PM +0100, Dan H. wrote:
> > for a home computer that gets shutdown daily, I'd like to implement a
> > function which:
> >
> > 1. makes sure that all pending outgoing mails are sent off.
>
> Here's what I've come up with. Anything not to like?
>
> #!/bin/sh
>
> # install with this as root:
> # # update-rc.d flushmail defaults 21 19
> # assuming that exim has sequence number 20 on startup and shutdown.
>
>
> ### BEGIN INIT INFO
> # Provides: flushmail
> # Required-Start:
> # Required-Stop: exim4 mail-transport-agent
> # Should-Start:
> # Default-Start:
> # Default-Stop: 0 1 6
> # Short-Description: Flush mail queue
> ### END INIT INFO
>
> set -e
>
> QUEUERUNNER="/usr/sbin/runq"
>
> if [ ! -x $QUEUERUNNER ] ; then exit 1 ; fi
>
> case "$1" in
> start)
> echo "Not flushing on startup"
> ;;
>
> restart|stop)
> echo -n "Flushing mail queue..."
> $QUEUERUNNER
> echo "done."
> ;;
> esac
>
> exit 0

You may want to touch /etc/nologin while this happens, then remove it at
the end of the script. It can also include the backup scripts he
wishes.

Doug.


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