============================================================================== TODO ============================================================================== Unsorted TODO list of features and points of investigation that could be useful for improving finit. But what is an improvement to finit? Well, similiar to launchd, the goal of finit is to be a FAST replacement for: * init * inetd * crond * watchdogd The main goal is to be FAST. Secondary goals are to be: small, simple and with a very low dependency on external packages. Inetd ----- Simple way of running Interne services on demand, like the old inetd. inetd [RUNLVL] SVC tcp/udp wait/nowait @user /path/to/daemon args -- descr inetd [RUNLVL] SVC tcp/udp wait/nowait @user /etc/finit.d/script.inetd args -- descr Where the latter is simply a script file with the following contents: exec = /path/to/daemon iface = IFNAME[:PORT], IFNAME[:PORT], ... Example: /etc/finit.conf: inetd [2345] ssh tcp nowait @root ssh.inetd -- SSH Daemon /etc/finit.d/ssh.inetd: exec = /sbin/dropbear iface = vlan1:222, vlan2, vlan3, vlan4 Priority -------- The intent of finit is to monitor not just processes, but also to be able to supervise the entire system and the behavior of certain processes that declare themselves to be finit compliant. * Integrate the ingenious libev to handle all events: signals, polling fd's, etc. Because "Event driven software improves concurrency" -- Dave Zarzycki, Apple. See the `launchd video`_ for more info! * Add support for process and system supervision. Which could be an API wrapping, e.g., TIPC and loadavg. * Add support for a /dev/watchdog plugin to replace watchdogd * Integrate watchdog plugin with process/system supervisor to reboot the system when a process stops responding, or when restarting it is imposible, as well as when system load gets too high. Configuration ------------- * Add support for "init " and SIGHUP to reload finit.conf, but also * Add support for inotify to automatically reload finit.conf Runlevels --------- * Add support for "runlevel N" to finit.conf * Improve support for runlevels: startup, running (services from finit.conf), and shutdown as well as hooks when switching RL, startup at RL 1 and a default run level. * Implement initctl stop|start|restart|reload|status and service stop|start|restart|reload|status on top * Add PRE and POST hooks for when changing runlevels * SysV init in Debian uses an rcS.d/ for scripts that should run once at boot. These scripts are run before the actual runlevel, which is set in inittab. We could use "task [S]" and "run [S]" (below) for this. * Add support for a new runlevel 'S' that is started before all other services in the selected runlevel. Services and Tasks ------------------ Both the "task" and "boot" stanzas below are like "service", share the same mechanism for registering callbacks. These callbacks can be used to check a configuration db and return 1 (RUN), 2 (STOP), or 3 (RELOAD). * Add support for "task [RUNLVL] ..." similar to services, but one-shot. * Add support for "run [RUNLVL] ..." similar to task, but waits for completion before continuing with the next task/service * Add support for service/task/run dependencies * Add support for "init list" to show running services It is tempting to say that a task called at runlevel S would be a blocking call, like run, but there are likely use-cases when you want to call on-shot tasks in parallell with something else, even at boot. Hence the differentiation between "task" and "run", which are essentially the same, except for the "pause and wait for completion" that "run" has. Miscellaneous ------------- * Add support for "init -v,--version | version" * Cleanup move sources from top-level directory to src/ and include/ * Make sure to install queue.h to $(PREFIX)/include/finit/queue.h * Move finit.conf "check" command to plugin which checks /etc/fstab instead. This is the de-facto practise. But keep the check command for really low-end systems w/o /etc/fstab. Documentation ------------- * Write man pages for finit and finit.conf, steal from pimd man pages... * Update Debian finit.conf example with runlevels, tty/console and dependency handling Investigation ------------- * `FHS changes`_ affecting runtime status, plugins, etc. .. _`launchd video`: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cD_s6Fjdri8 .. _`FHS changes`: http://askubuntu.com/questions/57297/why-has-var-run-been-migrated-to-run .. .. Local Variables: .. mode: rst .. version-control: t .. End: