The officially official Devuan Forum!

dindusmith

Member

Registered: 2024-09-22

Posts: 2  

Why has no one enhanced sysvinit?

sysvinit conforms to the Unix philosophy, small is beautiful, do one thing to be the best. On my configured system, it starts and shuts down faster than Debian. However, sysvinit lacks many useful functions of systemd, such as sensitive hot-swapping function, detailed monitoring function of services, etc. If these insufficient functions can be added, then it will be really perfect, instead of reinventing the wheel like systemd.  Here is my startup cache:

Camtaf

Member

Registered: 2019-11-19

Posts: 429  

Re: Why has no one enhanced sysvinit?

Because it does what it was programmed to do...

golinux

Administrator

Registered: 2016-11-25

Posts: 3,295  

Re: Why has no one enhanced sysvinit?

Because less is more . . .   

---

Get answers - Help Devuan - Report a bug - Search packages

Altoid

Member

Registered: 2017-05-07

Posts: 1,562  

Re: Why has no one enhanced sysvinit?

Hello:

sysvinit conforms to the Unix philosophy, small is beautiful, do one thing to be the best.

Exactly ...
Seems to me that you knew the answer before posting the question. ;^ )

... does what it was programmed to do...

... less is more . . .

+1

Best,

A.

EDX-0

Member

Registered: 2020-12-12

Posts: 76  

Re: Why has no one enhanced sysvinit?

well, sysvinit is unix philosophy compliant, you know that that means?

we do not need to make those other features a necessary part of sysvinit, just implement programs that can perform them and then can interact with sysvinit, for example for hot-swapping/hot-plugging hardware there is a daemon that can manage devices and apply rules, properties and run other programs in response to device plugging, it is called the udev daemon, in devuan it is provided by eudev.

now for service monitoring i know some use daemontools and i remember reading o someone that rolled out a daemon to monitor the running services.

stopAI

Member

Registered: 2023-04-04

Posts: 170  

Re: Why has no one enhanced sysvinit?

Hello.

I agree with everyone who has said in previous posts.

Sysvinit is a great example of unix philosophy. And if a person is not satisfied with this, he always has the option of using the malware-systemd.

zapper

Member

Registered: 2017-05-29

Posts: 952  

Re: Why has no one enhanced sysvinit?

@all Or you could just use openrc which is way more functional then sysvinit but isn't that bloated monolith systemd.

---

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. Feelings are not facts
If you wish to be humbled, try to exalt yourself long term  If you wish to be exalted, try to humble yourself long term
Favourite operating systems: Hyperbola Devuan OpenBSD
Peace Be With us All!

rolfie

Member

Registered: 2017-11-25

Posts: 1,158  

Re: Why has no one enhanced sysvinit?

View of a simple user: sysvinit is just functional, I have moved back from openrc to sysvinit.

zapper

Member

Registered: 2017-05-29

Posts: 952  

Re: Why has no one enhanced sysvinit?

@rolfie my point was that, its not just systemd or sysvinit... there are other options.

---

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. Feelings are not facts
If you wish to be humbled, try to exalt yourself long term  If you wish to be exalted, try to humble yourself long term
Favourite operating systems: Hyperbola Devuan OpenBSD
Peace Be With us All!

rolfie

Member

Registered: 2017-11-25

Posts: 1,158  

Re: Why has no one enhanced sysvinit?

I do not see any advantage from using openrc, runit, s6 ... whatever. They promise a lot, but I do not get their benefits.

golinux

Administrator

Registered: 2016-11-25

Posts: 3,295  

Re: Why has no one enhanced sysvinit?

Bragging rights perhaps?

---

Get answers - Help Devuan - Report a bug - Search packages

blackhole

Member

Registered: 2020-03-16

Posts: 93  

Re: Why has no one enhanced sysvinit?

Unless you're administering a server, service supervision, or lack of, isn't really a factor.  So it's not really a con that sysvinit lacks this. If you are a sysadmin, service supervision might make your life easier, as part of your job role may be to keep flakey crap up and running.

We had a lot of this around 10 years ago:

"sysvinit lacks service supervision"
"you must be a server sysadmin (as per above)"
"no I'm just some random opinionated fanboi twat who read lots of Poettering's blogs - in 10 years from now I will be sneering at those who are reluctant to move to Wayland".

My FreeBSD servers run what they need to run using BSD init. systemd units have been less reliable and less untuitive and more difficult to manage.

This "migrate and upgrade" bollocks comes from the proprietary mindset, where every migration and upgrade is profit for Big Tech corporations.

Last edited by blackhole (Yesterday 22:06:57)

Altoid

Member

Registered: 2017-05-07

Posts: 1,562  

Re: Why has no one enhanced sysvinit?

Hello:

Bragging rights perhaps?

Hmmm ... Sharp.
You may have a something there.

From when all init software thing came into my field of view a few years ago, (as a workstation/desktop/laptop user) I could really not understand the benefits of whatever other choice I had besides the default sysvinit software I had running in my system.

I mean ...
WTF4?

ie: to what advantage?   <- key question for anyone with a workstation / desktop / laptop / netbook / RPi / etc.

What I did realise right away (10+ years of MS registry maintenance under my belt) was what a radical change / departure from what Linux is the advent of systemd brought along, so I looked for something else and found Devuan Jesse.

Thanks for that.

Best,

A.

stopAI

Member

Registered: 2023-04-04

Posts: 170  

Re: Why has no one enhanced sysvinit?

I have moved back from openrc

Hello.

I would like to ask, what is the reason for this? Why did you come back to sysvinit territory?

rolfie

Member

Registered: 2017-11-25

Posts: 1,158  

Re: Why has no one enhanced sysvinit?

@stopAI: Don't expect any further insight, I am a simple user running a small home network with some PCs here.

I am with Devuan since ASCII was Testing and I discovered that ASCII supported my method of encryption/automatic decryption during bootup I used to use with my Debian installations before systemd. For some reason I started with openRC.

My experience that openRC did not care for non-critical but irritating error messages, understanding that openRC is more or less just an add-on to sysvinit, reading some of the forum entries and comments from fsmithred and ralphronnquist pointing to sysvinit as the primary init system made me try this on all my installations I have done from last year onward, and I miss nothing.