Boot poster challenge

[Jeff Pitman]

On Monday 15 November 2004 13:32, Bill Nottingham wrote:
> Using minit as a replacement for init saves zero time (and adds
> additional complexity due to its (IMO, broken) dependency model.)
>
> It's fixing the underlying actions under init that is the big win.

I agree.  Though, it's nice to look at it to see what it can bring to 
the table, because Minit you can get a call tree of:

	Minit -> service  (single exec called from C)

In most cases.  Whereas with the current init process you get a calltree 
similar to this:

	Init -> Shell (rc) -> Exec'd Shells (rc?.d/S*) -> Config Files -> 
service

Several levels of indirection brings flexibility in what you can do and 
how you can configure it (Just look at the difference between SuSE and 
Redhat; yeah, LSB, whatever).  But, this comes at a cost.

So, playing with Minit does not necessarily mean an immediate call for a 
replacement of init.  Playing with minit highlights the changes needed 
in the system configuration.  Though, trying to keep compliant with LSB 
and maintaining use of /bin/sh is going to be a tough job with the 
current init.  With minit, the tough job would be integration with 
current infra.  Course, this is tougher than the former, but 
nonetheless, as I stated earlier, a good exercise.

Maybe in the end, a C version of rc, a config compiler, and a 
parallelization technique with deps will get the job done using the 
current init.

take care,
-- 
-jeff