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mark_2461

Member

Registered: 2026-08-11

Posts: 1  

Chose runit but getting mashup of SysV and Runit

I've gone through the install three times now over the past two weeks. I have Void Linux on another drive so I'm familiar with the way runit looks when loading the system and how it operates in relation to interacting with services. The first time I loaded Devuan I chose SysV init because it had been such a long time since seeing it last. I have noticed runit is much faster on my machine than SysV, so I chose to reload and at the end I chose runit as the init system. The first time doing this I noticed at startup things didn't look quite right and calling services to either restart or get a status things weren't working. Searching for the location of the service scripts revealed they were in /etc/init.d/ and not where runit would keep them - /etc/sv. So, I reloaded again today just in case I did something wrong the last time. At the end of the install I chose runit as the init system.

When the system rebooted I noticed the same startup behavior. What I've got is a mashup on runit and sysv init. This is acutely annoying.

Is there a special trick to actually getting a discrete runit init system or is the choice at the end of the install just window dressing? I much prefer runit over SysV init.

Thanks in advance...,

Mark

Last edited by mark_2461 (Today 19:04:49)

ralph.ronnquist

Administrator

From: Battery Point, Tasmania, AUS

Registered: 2016-11-30

Posts: 1,726  

Re: Chose runit but getting mashup of SysV and Runit

The debian package system is one of "distributed responsibility" where all software is installed and sprinkled over the system in the way that the package maintainer chooses. There is some structural advice, and in fact control, by the teams that accept packages into the repositories, so that in general an installed system may appear as a designed system whereas in fact that appearance is merely an emergent effect of the package maintainer's implementations of the general policies.

One of the problems with that is that the repository providers don't have a say in any particular system installation. Each system gets installed and setup the way it happens from, indirectly, the system administrator's choices of packages. Thus it's the combined effect ot the package maintainers' sprinkling of software over the filesystem.

Another effect is that composite aggregates, such as "a discrete runit init system", might not exist as an indivisible unit. Rather it emerges, if at all, from the totality of the installed packages. Sometimes people create "aggregation packages" that essentially are empty of their own content but they bring together particular other detail packages by means of utilizing the package dependency system in debian. I.e., those package mantainers try to compound particular composite aggregates.  Given your note, it appears runit is not one of those.

Thus in short, whether the combined effect of your package choices is to your liking or not is unfortunately not under control by the repository service, which is what Devuan is. There are however the issue managers, deb.debian.org for debian packages and deb.devuan.org for the devuan forked packages, that you may explore and use in order to assist the package maintainers with feedback regarding how their packages work (or not) in the particular constallation you are using.