On Sat, 26 Nov 2005, in the Usenet newsgroup comp.os.linux.setup, in article
<op.s0uo1si8nxtvbs@apeiron.home.lan>, Enrique Perez-Terron wrote:

>In other words, your mission is not to teach them a recipe of twenty
>keypresses and two mouse gestures that installs apache as a service on
>a computer running no matter what distribution. Your mission is to
>enable them to figure out how it is done on their particular distro,
>with the fallback of writing a script they can stick in /etc/inittab.

[Without inferring disrespect to the O/P]

BRAVO!!! Well stated, sir!!!

>As far as I know, all distros start from init and /etc/inittab. Teach
>them to start there if everything else fails.

Actually (quoting from "From-PowerUp-To-Bash-Prompt-HOWTO"):

Once the kernel is loaded, the first thing it does is look for an init
program to run.

The 'init' used in many modern UNIX or UNIX-like systems influenced by
SystemV (and that includes Linux) looks for a file named /etc/inittab,
and away we go. Yes, /etc/inittab may call a bewildering choice of
files, but it's the common starting point. Even common DOS/windoze users
_used_ to know that there were two files that started things - config.sys
and autoexec.bat. Most never had a clue _what_ those files were doing,
but they were used to having to edit them (with help) to add crap. Then
microsoft lowered the bar...

To the original poster - Reading the "From-PowerUp-To-Bash-Prompt-HOWTO"
really would be a good idea, and it might even be a useful document for
your class to read as a homework assignment.

Old guy