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Article:		Start Me Up: Writing and Understanding OS X StartupItems
Subject:		/Library/StartupItems and Fink's init.sh
Date:		2003-12-20 12:13:24
From:		anonymous2

printenv > somelogfile.log shows that the startup items are run in a minimalistic environment -- after rc.common is loaded, only PATH, SHLVL, and _ are defined! The problem is, this means that the if [ -z "$FOO" ] etc. clauses in fink's init.sh will fail when variable FOO isn't already defined, and so using apache2 or popfile (which I have configured to use BerkeleyDB from fink) means starting them by hand. The solution was to copy /sw/bin/init.sh to /etc/initfink.sh (or whatever), trim down the various variable-defining conditionals in initfink.sh (such as if [ -z "$MANPATH"] ... fi) with the knowledge that $PATH exists and the rest don't, replacing them with the appropriate consequence or alternative. Then, adding ". /etc/initfink.sh" after pulling in rc.common makes everything work.