Alternative Init System

[Yuki Cuss]

Rocco Stanzione wrote:
> I'd be surprised if this hasn't been brought up before, but since I haven't 
> seen it I'd like to mention it here.  My experience with supervisor-style 
> init systems, specifically runit-run, has left me with the opinion that the 
> sysV system has served its purpose and is ready to be replaced.  I spend a 
> lot of time on the support channels on IRC and I'd say startup times are 
> among the top 20 complaints I see.  Since most of the startup time is 
> consumed by starting services, and since supervisor-style init systems start 
> services concurrently and very quickly, this could make a huge impact.
>
> I don't think that this by itself constitutes an excuse to make such a huge 
> change, necessarily, but I do think it's a compelling argument that should be 
> part of the discussion, if there's to be one.  Stability is another.  I've 
> experienced stability problems with poorly written init scripts, but 
> otherwise it's inherently more stable than sysV by virtue of the fact that 
> services are "supervised" and that runit-run (for example) knows how to 
> restart services that have failed, crashed, locked up etc. without user 
> intervention.
>
> Not all services are good candidates for such a system because it's assumed 
> that a supervised service can be un-daemonized and can write its logs to 
> stdout and/or stderr, and of course some services aren't daemons at all.  But 
> I think moving services that can be moved to a system like this could make a 
> significant impact on stability, startup times, and in some cases 
> performance.
>
> I'd like to hear any input you guys have on this.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Rocco
>   
I am well in favour of this decision. At the moment, even something as 
simple as configuring network interfaces can cause a system to stall on 
boot, even indefinitely. I suspect a large number of services are not 
dependencies of the desktop system, or even of the server system, deeply 
enough to say that we must wait for them to finish (or even start) 
initialising before we can log in.

 - Yuki.

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