Subject: Init/getty/login ?
To: Linux-activists@joker.cs.hut.fi
From: moroz@inzer.demos.su (Oleg Moroz)
Date: Thu, 26 Dec 91 23:49:15 +0200 (MSK)

  I wonder: is anybody doing standard (SystemV-style) init, getty and login
for Linux ?  I miss it very much (especially after the virtual console patch
was posted) and I'm thinking about a possibility to do it myself. As it will
cause the noticeable difference in system startup behaviour, I think that we
Linux users & hackers should reach some agreement about it before some work
will be done.

  Oleg
-- 
* Oleg Moroz               Surface address: P.O.Box 30, 103031, Moscow, USSR *
* Software Designer        Internet address:            moroz@inzer.demos.su *
* Steepler Ltd.            Phone:      +7 (095) 214-81-92, 245-86-62 (voice) *
* "I've looked over jordan and I've seen/Things are not what they seem" - PF *

Subject: Re: Init/getty/login ?
From: Yanek Martinson < yanek@mthvax.cs.miami.edu>
To: moroz@inzer.demos.su (Oleg Moroz)
Date: Thu, 26 Dec 91 17:56:28 EST
Cc: Linux-activists@joker.cs.hut.fi
In-Reply-To: < AARvaMfOT6@inzer.demos.su>; from "Oleg Moroz" at Dec 26, 91 11:49 pm

>   I wonder: is anybody doing standard (SystemV-style) init, getty and login
> for Linux ? 

I have started writing an init. I also have found a login, a cron, and
an uucp (havent tried these on linux yet)...

> As it will cause the noticeable difference in system startup behaviour,

I don't think startup sequence will change that much. After running
/etc/rc, instead of running shell, init will be run in it's place. And
the code that sets up fd-s for shell can be left out (a getty will do
that) and also the code after that 'child #### terminated' can be left
out (init never dies (supposedly :-)). This will make the system image
a bit smaller. I sont see any other changes..

> Linux users & hackers

Are there any users yet? I mean is anybody using linux for anything
other than hacking? 

> should reach some agreement about it before some work will be done.

The SysV-style init is so flexible (with run-levels, and /etc/inittab)
that there should be no problem for everybody to configure it
whichever way they like it.


p.s. the telinit command (run from command line) needs to communicate
one byte (actually one of: '0123456SsQq') to the running init
proccess. What is the best way to do this? Send a signal? Write to a
file? A named pipe would be great but we dont have these yet.