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| Propaganda for version 2.58 of sysvinit & utilities |
| ================================================== |
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| NOTE: If you use a standard distribution like Slackware, Debian |
| or Redhat there probably is no need to upgrade. Installing sysvinit |
| is only for those that upgrade their system by hand or for people |
| that create Linux distributions. |
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| Sysvinit is probably the most widely used init package for Linux. |
| Most distributions use it. sysvinit 2.4 is really a good package, |
| and it was not the need for bugfixes but the need for more features |
| that made me work on sysvinit again. |
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| Sysvinit is now a debian package. Debian source packages are not |
| special in any way -- in fact you can just unpack and compile |
| it on any other Linux distribution. |
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| There was a 2.50 release of sysvinit but that was not very popular- |
| some of the included scripts broke with certain shells and other |
| minor things like that. Unfortunately I was not able to fix this |
| at the time because I was abroad for some time. Therefore the |
| description below is a comparison of 2.4 and 2.58 (actually the |
| same blurb as from the 2.50 announce but updated). |
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| Wrt 2.4, some of the code has been made simpler. Everything, from |
| halt to reboot to single user mode is now done by shell scripts |
| that are executed directly by init (from /etc/inittab), so shutdown |
| does not kill processes anymore and then calls reboot - it merely |
| does some wall's to the logged in users and then switches to |
| runlevel 0 (halt), 1 (single user) or 6 (reboot). |
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| I have removed support for the old style scripts; the included |
| example scripts are the Debian GNU/Linux distribution scripts. |
| This does not mean that eg the Slackware scripts stop to work; |
| you can probably drop this init into Slackware 3.0 without problems. |
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| Most people have an entry in inittab to run shutdown when CTRL-ALT-DEL |
| is pressed; a feature has been added to shutdown to check if a |
| authorized user is logged in on one of the consoles to see if a |
| shutdown is allowed. This can be configured with an access file. |
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| Some other general changes: |
| - utility "runlevel" to read the current and previous runlevel from |
| /var/run/utmp (it's also shown on the command line if you do a "ps"). |
| - unreckognized options are silently ignored (such as the infamous |
| "ro" - mount root file system read only). |
| - if the file /etc/initscript is present it will be used to launch |
| all programs that init starts (so that you can set a generic |
| umask, ulimit eg for ALL processes - see initscript.sample). |
| - A "sulogin" program added that always asks for the root |
| passsword before entering single user mode. |
| - A "-b" flag to init that starts a shell at boot time before |
| _any_ other processing. |
| - I moved /etc/fastboot to /fastboot - wonder what that's gonna break :) |
| - I even updated the manpages! |
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| Right, now some boring stuff you already know since it's the same |
| as in the 2.4 release: |
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| The sysvinit package includes |
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| * a sysv compatible /sbin/init program |
| * a telinit program (er, just a link to /sbin/init) to change runlevels |
| * a featureful shutdown |
| * halt and reboot to assist shutdown |
| * a very forgiving last utility |
| * the wall & mesg programs (not installed by default) |
| * manpages for everything |
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| The new sysv init can be found on: |
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| tsx-11.mit.edu:/pub/linux/sources/sbin as sysvinit-2.58-1.tar.gz |
| sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/system/Daemons as sysvinit-2.58-1.tar.gz |
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| It will be moved there in a few days, in the mean time it is |
| probably in the Incoming directory. |
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| Mike. (02-Jan-1996) |
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