Why do packages come without init.d scripts?

Question

I am running Raspbian on my raspberry pi.

I downloaded and installed the custom drivers from Realtek for my wifi dongle

After compiling and moving the binary created to /usr/sbin/ I saw that I could not call service hostapd start as it returned **hostapd: unrecognized service **

I was told that I must create a init.d script for this and place it in the /etc/init.d/ folder

I decided to look at another init.d script for a program called dhcpd, the file contents are

#!/bin/sh
#
### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides:          dhcpcd
# Required-Start:    $local_fs
# Required-Stop:     $local_fs
# Should-Start:
# Should-Stop:
# Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
# Default-Stop:      0 1 6
# Short-Description: IPv4 DHCP client with IPv4LL support
# Description:
### END INIT INFO

PATH=/sbin:/bin
DHCPCD=/sbin/dhcpcd
NAME=dhcpcd
PIDFILE=/var/run/dhcpcd.pid

test -x $DHCPCD || exit 0

INTERFACES=/etc/network/interfaces

. /lib/lsb/init-functions

sanity()
{
        local x=

        case "$($DHCPCD --version)" in
        [1234].*)
                log_failure_msg "Not running $NAME because an older version" \
                        "is currently preferred"
                exit 6
        esac

        for x in /var/run/dhcpcd-*.pid; do
                [ -f "$x" ] || continue
                log_failure_msg "Not running $NAME because there is aleady an" \
                        "interface specific instance"
                log_failure_msg "$x"
                exit 6
        done

        if grep -q "^[[:space:]]*iface[[:space:]]*.*[[:space:]]*inet[[:space:]]*dhcp" \
        $INTERFACES; then
                log_failure_msg "Not running $NAME because $INTERFACES"
                log_failure_msg "defines some interfaces that will use a" \
                        "DHCP client"
                exit 6
        fi
}

case "$1" in
start)
        sanity
        if pidofproc -p $PIDFILE $DHCPCD >/dev/null; then
                log_warning_msg "$NAME is already running"
                exit 0
        fi
        $DHCPCD
        ;;
stop)
        sanity
        $DHCPCD -x
        ;;
restart|force-reload)
        sanity
        $DHCPCD -x
        $DHCPCD
        ;;
try-restart)
        if ! pidofproc -p $PIDFILE $DHCPCD >/dev/null; then
                log_warning_msg "$NAME is not running"
        else
                sanity
                $DHCPCD -x
                $DHCPCD
        fi
        ;;
reload)
        if ! pidofproc -p $PIDFILE $DHCPCD >/dev/null; then
                log_failure_msg "$NAME is not running"
                exit 7
        fi
        sanity
        $DHCPCD -n
        ;;
status)
        status_of_proc -p $PIDFILE $DHCPCD "$NAME" || exit $?
        ;;
*)
        log_failure_msg "Usage: /etc/init.d/dhcpcd {start|stop|restart|try-restart|force-reload|status}"
        exit 1
        ;;
esac

It SURELY cannot be the case that the user is expected to create a init.d file for a binary just compiled? And even if they do what are the chances of the integrity of all the if statments and msg outputs being accurate?

Have I missed something here? is there a common filename/location for init.d scripts within the package.zip file prior to calling make?

A file that specific should be written by somebody who has a good understanding of the binary...

Answer 1

Not all linux distros use the same kind of init scripts. Even for distros that ostensibly used SysV init system had shell functions that were distro-specific.

Also, there's a 'hostapd' package in raspbian that includes a hostapd init script, perhaps that might be what you should be using anyway.