I have a SLES 9 configuration that boots from hard disk and also uses LVM SAN space for Oracle partitions. For this to work, I had to ensure that LVM was started before raw and Oracle in the run level 3 boot sequence. The modifications made to support this were:

cd /etc/init.d/rc3.d/
1. Delete existing S12raw symbolic link
2. Delete existing S13oracle symbolic link
3. Create new S16lvm link: ln -s ../boot.lvm S16lvm
4. Create new S17raw link: ln -s ../raw S17raw
5. Create new S18oracle link: ln -s ../oracle S18oracle

After rebooting, all works as expected.

However, I've been finding that after subsequent maintenance reboots the original S12raw and S13oracle links have been reestablished and the S17raw and S18oracle links have vanished. The S16lvm link remains, but it now runs after Oracle, so the LV partitions Oracle expects to find are not yet instantiated and Oracle fails to load properly.

I have rebooted the system multiple times in a row and the new links remain in place - they are automagically changing later. I've checked all crontab files and there's nothing that reverts to the original links.

Any idea what is reverting these links or how to make them persistent?

As one possible solution, can I perform the same symbolic link changes noted in the original post in the file /etc/init.d/boot.local to ensure that the expected boot sequence links are in place prior to starting the run level scripts?

Will /etc/init.d/rc3.d/ be available for manipulation at that point in the boot process?

You must not do the modifications manually for the runlevels.
Use update-rc.d or sysv-rc-conf
sysv-rc-conf is the easy way to do it.

Unfortunately, update-rc.d nor sysv-rc-conf are SLES 9 utilities. sysv-rc-conf will work for /etc/rc?.d, not /etc/init.d/rc?.d. I've run yast's Runlevel Editor, but it only allows turning services on/off and assigning run levels - not specifying init's script execution ordering.

Perhaps all I really needed to do was add dependencies for boot.lvm to both raw and oracle scripts?

well red hat usses similar runlevel configuration.
try red hat utilities ..
http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/l...down-sysv.html

I was able to determine that insserv was reordering the service script symlinks and altered the order using the service script header parameters. For some reason, adding a required startup dependecy for boot.lvm to the raw script had no effect, but adding a dependency for dhcpd to the raw script forced raw and oracle symlinks to move to after the LVM symlink I had created.