[ -- this is ment for the 2.60 release -- Mike ] Propaganda for version 2.60 of sysvinit & utilities ================================================== 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. 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 because I spent almost halt a year in Australia. Therefore the description below is a comparison of 2.4 and 2.60 (actually the same blurb as from the 2.50 announce but updated). 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). In the package the new-style scripts are included as an example. These scripts ran without modification on all systems I tried it on, but probably not on your system, according to Murphy. So some tweaking is probably required. Because of these changes, it is now possible for the brave SystemV fans under you to write a complete sysv style boot up environment - a sample directory with scripts for that case is also included. I wanted to make that the default, but it seems unnessecary complex for a simple Linux box. I did test the scripts, but a long time ago. I have updated them regulary to keep in sync with the rest of the code, but haven't tested it anymore after that. 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. One interesting new feature in this init package is that it actually supports a serial line as the "console" - if you enter single user mode from a serial terminal (by "init S" or "shutdown now") that terminal will become the logical system console if it's listed in /etc/securetty. This means that /dev/console gets linked to the tty line of the terminal. A new device gets created, /dev/systty that is the physical console - aka /dev/tty0. Note that this ofcourse does not happen on an "ordinary" reboot. The problem with this is that most programs that use special virtual console system calls (like dosemu, and XFree) try to access /dev/console instead of tty0 and they don't like to find a serial device there. The only solution is to create a /dev/tty0 (or in my case, a /dev/vc00) and patch the source (or binary) of the offending program to use that device instead of /dev/console. Some other general changes: - utility "runlevel" to read the current and previous runlevel from /etc/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). - I even updated the manpages! Right, now some boring stuff you already know since it's the same as in the 2.4 release: The sysvinit package includes * 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 * powerd, a higly configurable UPS watchdog. * manpages for everything * sample scripts to set up an /etc/rc.d directory with scripts per runlevel. The new sysv init can be found on: tsx-11.mit.edu:/pub/linux/sources/sbin as sysvinit-2.60.tgz sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/system/Daemons as sysvinit-2.60.tgz It will be moved there in a few days, in the mean time it is probably in the Incoming directory. Mike. (10-Jul-1995) -- Miquel van Smoorenburg, miquels@cistron.nl Cistron Internet Services Mail info@cistron.nl An independent Dutch Internet Provider for more information <a href="http://www.cistron.nl/">CIS +31-1720-19445 (Voice) 30979 (Fax) 42580 (Data) - Alphen a/d Rijn