upstart 0.5, user-land tools and roadmap

[Garrett Cooper]

On Mon, Oct 27, 2008 at 12:45 AM, shirish <shirishag75 at gmail.com> wrote:
> This is what I'm exactly looking for
>
> https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-discuss/2008-September/005535.html
>
> Isn't this what upstart is supposed to do?
>
> Please tell me if upstart is not supposed to do this. If not, whom or
> where I should ask for this?

Technically no, upstart doesn't do more than detect job / process
states and handles them according to the definitions within the job
file (how many times should it be respawned, what bourne shell
statements should I use to execute before the job proper starts, etc).

Certainly, systems can potentially start up quicker using upstart (in
particular systems with SMP enabled), but that's because jobs aren't
spawned serially (necessarily), but in parallel. This allows
non-dependent components of the system to startup independent of one
another, which is a win-win if the logic isn't written improperly,
such that race conditions are riddled throughout the job files.

The problem with many distributions (as the poster on the mailing list
claimed) is the fact that the olde SysV initscripts have not been
converted to job files, due to the sheer magnitude of the number of
scripts which need converting. Once enough people pitch into this
effort, I bet you that yes, the system will boot up quicker.

<OT Rant>
If you're more concerned about not using optional services like
bluetooth, etc, I honestly think that you need to consider disabling
services on your system (and for that I defer you back to the beginner
/ intermediate lists for help). There are many items from within
vanilla Redhat-based distros which quite frankly I don't need and I
disable after booting up for the first time for quicker bootup and a
reduction in resource consumption. If you don't have that capability,
prod the Ubuntu folks to enhance their startup infrastructure to not
assume that everyone has bluetooth device, etc. udevd + hotplug + hald
are sufficient enough to detect bluetooth support in this day in age
with Linux.
</OT Rant>

Cheers and best of luck,
-Garrett