On 20-4-2010 8:53, Fabian Groffen wrote:
On 19-04-2010 14:52:10 -0700, Steve Schmechel wrote:
  
I've used MonetDB on Ubuntu using the .deb package and there is no
init.d script created to start/stop merovingian.  (That would be a nice
addition, if only for consistency.)

When I got the error starting merovingian, I would just do a: 
"sudo mkdir /var/run/MonetDB" and try again and it would work.

I ended up creating my own init.d script and I had to check and create
the /var/run/MonetDB if needed.  I never figured out what exactly was
removing the directory.  I just figured merovingain was being overly
tidy when shutting down.  

IMHO, if it is going to be so tidy as to create .pid files in its own
directory, it should take responsibility for creating the needed
sub-directory when it first starts.
    
It isn't that tidy as far as I can tell.  It simply cannot create the
directory either, since it should run as a user (non-root), hence it has
no permissions to create a new directory in /var/run.

Here (misc amount of systems) merovingian doesn't remove
${prefix}/var/run/MonetDB when shutting down.  Does Ubuntu perhaps clean
/var/run upon a (re)boot?  Makes sense from a "removing stale pidfiles"
point of view.  It would get unpleasantly in our way though.  Maybe some
.keep file (like on Gentoo) is necessary in the MonetDB directory to
prevent it from being removed.

  
Yes it does.
I suspect this is a Debian/Ubuntu issue (with the .deb installers) more
than a merovingian problem, based on above thoughts.
  
It is not an issue, quoting the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard about /var/run:

"
Files under this directory must be cleared (removed or truncated as appropriate) at the beginning of the boot process."

http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html#VARRUNRUNTIMEVARIABLEDATA

Debian/Ubuntu does this correctly.
-- 
Gijs Molenaar
http://gijs.pythonic.nl