Some third-party applications create sub-sub-directories in /var/run for
tracking state. For example, VMware makes /var/run/vmware/$user for every user
that runs it, then stores state for each user in those directories.

This causes errors when the system boots up and rc.sysinit is processed. I get

rm: cannot remove '/var/run/vmware/cricker': Is a directory

when the block:

for afile in /var/lock/* /var/run/* ; do
  if [ -d "$afile" ]; then
     case "`basename $afile`" in
    news|mon) ;;
    sudo)
        rm -f $afile/*/* ;;
    *)    rm -f $afile/* ;;
     esac
  else
     rm -f $afile
  fi
done

in rc.sysinit runs

It looks to me like the

*) rm -f $afile/* ;;

stuff needs to make sure that it's a file, not a dir, that's being removed

(or else misguided third-party vendors need fixing, but that's a whole 'nother
matter ;-)